


In Between Tomorrows

by RenGoneMad



Category: Naruto
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Character Study, Comfort/Angst, Developing Relationship, Discord: Umino Hours, Dreamsharing, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Friendship/Love, Hatake Kakashi-centric, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Alternating, POV Hatake Kakashi, POV Umino Iruka, Secret Identity, Slow Romance, Surreal, Wings, Wolf Hatake Kakashi, as canon compliant as it can be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:47:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26090626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RenGoneMad/pseuds/RenGoneMad
Summary: Iruka could feel the howl.It reverberated in his bones, hummed just beneath his skin.Initially, he had thought of it like hundreds of tiny threads, reaching out and tugging at his consciousness while he dropped off to sleep. After he met Wolf for the first time in the dreams, it had become a recognizable wolf’s howl even that never quite reached his ears, sticking somewhere in the crevices of his mind instead.It was his call. The sign that Wolf was ready to be found.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi & Umino Iruka, Hatake Kakashi/Umino Iruka
Comments: 82
Kudos: 345
Collections: Umino Undercover





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kalira](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalira/gifts).



> This is for Kalira over at the Umino Hours discord. I sort of built this whole thing on a mishmash of things you like. xD I hope you enjoy it~ <3
> 
> HUGE thanks to booleanWildcard for making this worlds better~ <3 I'm so grateful for the incredible beta. Any lingering mistakes are 100% mine.
> 
> There are no real CWs for this story, just very brief references to minor character death or injuries, nothing near as graphic as what's shown in canon. This is completely finished and edited and will be posted one part a day for the 27th-30th.

It was too early in the morning to be awake—but then again, Iruka always thought that. He hoped being a shinobi wouldn’t mean he had to get up as early as he did for school. His dad said that humans were made to rise with the sun; if that were true, then Iruka definitely wasn’t human. 

The tree line beside the graveyard made a shortcut to where civilian school and boring lessons awaited him, allowing a precious extra six minutes of sleep. He didn’t see a reason why he had to bother going at all, but his mom made the excellent argument that even shinobi had to write up mission reports. He hadn’t quite understood her explanation for why math or history were necessary, but it sounded very important, so Iruka dutifully went to school and made an attempt to listen. 

_Most_ importantly, it gave Iruka something to do when his parents were gone.

He didn’t like being alone.

The forest and graveyard were quiet this early in the morning, with fog still in the air and the sky starting to flush orange as the sun crept above the treeline. It cast a warm glow on the gravestones, bringing life to the statues and fresh flowers that dotted the aisles. 

The graveyard was constantly expanding, forest being cut into every few years to make way for new graves. By the time Iruka became a shinobi, the trees he now walked through would likely be a distant memory. That was why he shouldn’t disturb them, his father said; it was disrespectful to the people that would eventually make the land their home. Iruka took the long way back from school because of that. He never saw visitors in the morning, though. There was no one for him to disturb.

Until now. 

Iruka thought the boy was another gravestone at first. The gray of his hair matched the stones, but he didn't fit in the neat rows, and stood a foot too high. The ebony of his clothes was also deceptive, not the grieving attire Iruka expected. They were combat blacks, similar to what his dad wore, but with belts lacing his chest. He had utility pouches, a kunai holster, and a hitai-ate, yet he only looked a few years older than Iruka. A mask covered most of his face, but his shoulders were slim, musculature undeveloped, and stature too short to have hit puberty. 

The boy stood in front of a grave. 

Iruka hadn't encountered anyone on his morning shortcuts before. He felt uneasy suddenly, like he was intruding, certain that at any moment the boy would look up and see him and tell his dad about his morning shortcuts. He hesitated, thinking about stepping farther into the treeline, when a strip of sunlight highlighted the boy’s face. 

He wasn't crying. 

He wasn't angry. 

He wasn't calm. 

His eyes were empty, dark gray and hooded, gaze reflecting off whatever name was carved in front of him. 

He looked lost. Empty, hollow, carved out and hung up to dry. 

But people’s outsides didn’t always match their insides. His dad said that, and Iruka knew it to be true. 

He knew, because people didn't look that hollow when they didn't care. They looked like that when they cared so much they thought they would die. When they cared so much that paper cranes of thoughts and emotions filled their stomach and throat and stayed clogged there, each fighting to break free first, but none succeeding, dry paper soaking up all moisture that could have gone to tears or snot or speech. 

That was how his mother looked after a bad mission. There had only been two, twice so bad that he remembered when she came home and sat at their kitchen table with empty hands, empty mouth, empty eyes, and stayed there all through the night, standing guard or waiting for something that would never come. 

Iruka didn't know what his mother had lost those times. He didn't know what this boy had lost, either, not really. But he knew what his dad did on those bad days. He made Kohari green tea, and he replaced it every time it grew cold. The first three or four or ten cups went undrunk, and Iruka asked if it wasn't a waste. His dad said that it was worth all the ryo those leaves cost, for the one cup that she would drink. That single warm, fresh cup was the only one that mattered, that one cup that greeted her when she was ready to fill the emptiness.

Iruka didn't know what that meant, but he thought someone should make tea for this boy, too. Iruka wasn't technically allowed to, because he burned himself the last time he tried to pour the kettle, but that was a whole month ago. Iruka had grown since then, would be six in less than two weeks. He could take this boy's hand and lead him home, and surely his dad wouldn't mind if he skipped school, just for one day, because Ikkaku stayed up all night when his mom was empty, replacing cup after cup. He would understand. 

The boy looked up. Empty gray met warm brown, and abruptly, there wasn't emptiness anymore. Silver brows rose, then fell, descending past neutral and settling on a scowl. 

The boy brought up his hands, made seals so fast Iruka couldn't have interpreted them even if he had memorized their names yet—

—and disappeared. 

When Iruka unfroze, he resumed his walk to school, having lost all the time he normally saved. 

The chill of early morning settled into his bones, but not his stomach. That was full of warmth, because for a moment—just a tiny, transient moment—the boy had looked relieved to see him. 

Iruka didn't know why, but he liked it. 

He hoped someone made the boy that tea.

Maybe it wasn’t about the leaves at all. Maybe the reason his dad stayed up with endless cups and boiling kettles was the same reason Iruka went to school, even when his parents weren’t around to make him. Maybe the tea was just a sign that someone was there, whenever they were needed, to fill the emptiness or wet the paper cranes so their mashed pulp would finally spill out, leaving room for something else.

It was nice not to be alone.

* * *

Kakashi’s plumed tail swept across the dusty floorboards, accruing dirt and debris from two years of desolation. His claws clacked on the wood, which creaked with the strain of his weight. Kakashi hesitated, paw lifted, and looked around to see if anyone heard. 

Of course not. 

There was no one here. 

Not even Kakashi. 

There were blood stains splattered on the boards, incongruous with Kakashi’s memories. The only one should be on the tatami in his father’s study. 

Kakashi didn’t go in there to check. This was his dream, and he would avoid it if he wanted to.

Pattering down the front steps, Kakashi descended to the well-kept grounds. This part was exactly as he remembered it, with blooming zinnia and jasmine and freshly-mown grass. The sun illuminated the greenery, casting no shadows, even beneath the gnarled white oak that should have painted shade over the koi pond. 

Kakashi couldn’t smell the flowers until he thought about them, couldn’t hear the buzz of cicadas or the heat on his fur until he realized that he should. The world was discriminating and unbalanced, highlighting only the parts the brain deemed most important—or perhaps those that it remembered best. Kakashi didn’t know how dreams worked, really, and didn’t want to. That was the sort of thing Rin would enjoy studying, and Obito would foolishly pretend to have interest in to get her attention. 

Kakashi didn’t live in fantasies. 

Except for now, of course, but he could hardly help what happened when he slept, no matter how much he tried. 

Kakashi padded to the edge of the pond, bending his head to peer into the surface. What he saw staring back at him was fuzzy and blurred at the edges, distorted in places, and yet somehow exactly what he expected. A silver wolf. Young, not quite fully grown—Kakashi was only ten, after all—with full cheeks and a rounded muzzle and ears that drooped at the tips. There was no mask covering his features, but Kakashi supposed the fur served that purpose. The canines that were a touch too prominent in his human form fit perfectly now, even elongated and whitened to lethal perfection. His nose was a glossy black and his eyes dark charcoal, much as they were in real life. They didn’t fit the wolf, Kakashi reflected morosely, too round to not be human. The one incongruous feature in the wolf’s face. 

Fur and a tail couldn’t quite hide what was inside, after all. 

A sudden swish of color in the pond caught Kakashi’s eyes, drawing his attention away from himself. He tilted his head curiously, leaning his weight on his front paws to peer inside. He caught it again, a flash of umber and blue, and those were strange colors for koi fish, but who was Kakashi the Wolf to judge? 

Except it wasn’t a koi, he realized, when a human head broke through the surface. 

Water cascaded down its crown and rolled from slim shoulders, causing ripples in the water that shook too much, like waves in a tsunami. Then they disappeared all at once, someone putting a damper on vibrating strings. 

Brown eyes blinked open, lined with damp eyelashes, and peered at him curiously. 

It was a boy. Small, probably a few years younger than Kakashi. His skin was tanned and smooth, his features pleasantly symmetrical, his long hair falling in a wet mass over the boy’s collarbones and back, ending somewhere around his waist. 

As Kakashi watched, the boy brought up a hand and scrubbed at his nose, sniffing loudly and wetly. 

“You’re a wolf.” The kid said abruptly, foregoing a greeting. His gaze flickered around the Hatake Estate, seeking out corners that faded into unnatural mist. “This is your dream, right?”

Kakashi didn’t consider that wolves couldn’t speak, and so words flew from his mouth smoothly, rolling off a stagnant tongue. “Well, I don’t think it’s reality.” 

“Huh.” The boy’s eyes settled back on him. “I’m Iruka.” He grinned suddenly. His upper-half tilted as something splashed above the water beside him, throwing up little droplets that reached Kakashi but somehow didn’t dampen his fur. “I’m a mermaid, see?”

“You’re a boy.” Kakashi thought so at least, and he certainly _hoped_ a little girl wasn’t swimming around bare-chested in his dreams. 

“Yeah, so?”

“‘Maid’ is for women. You should say ‘merman’.”

Iruka scowled. “ _I’m_ the mermaid, so I think I’ll decide what I’m called, thanks.” Kakashi caught a hint of iridescent blue scales as the tail briefly flicked above the surface once again. Despite the clear water, Kakashi couldn’t see anything below his reflection. Iruka’s expression turned thoughtful. “You might be right, though. I’ll ask mom.”

The boy started to sink down, and Kakashi felt a flicker of unease at the thought of him leaving, stranding Kakashi alone in this place. He didn’t remember mermen in his father’s koi pond, but as far as he was concerned, the farther away his dream stayed from the real Hatake Estate, the better. 

“Your name is Iruka?” Kakashi asked quickly. Kakashi didn’t like talking to people, usually, but then he usually didn’t mind being alone, either. He wasn’t himself right now. Wolves were social creatures, he excused to himself. It made sense for him to want to be around someone, even if it was a fish. “Isn’t that a bit too obvious?”

“Duh. That’s why I chose it.” Iruka rolled his eyes childishly. 

Well, he _was_ a child. 

Kakashi didn’t consider himself a child. He was already a chūnin, would probably be recommended to the jōnin examination before long. He was an adult in every reasonable sense of the word.

“You named yourself? Didn’t you say you have a mom?” Kakashi wondered if this was his subconscious telling him that he didn’t like his own name. It had been chosen by his mother, or so he had been told. 

“Not my name. A mermaid! I chose to be a mermaid _because_ of my name. Merman.” Iruka frowned, then nodded his head decisively. “Merman.” 

Kakashi didn’t think creations of his imagination should have free-will, especially so much as to choose their own species. That seemed like a recipe for disaster. But at the same time, he didn’t really want to control Iruka, either, and his dreams never seemed quite within his power to change, anyway. 

Dreams were as inevitable as death. 

“Shouldn’t you be a dolphin, then?” Kakashi drawled, tail flicking, collecting drew from the grass as he sat back on his haunches. That water felt real, unlike whatever Iruka swam in.

“I was going to be.” The boy grimaced. He twirled in the water, spinning in absent circles, occasionally bobbing high enough that the seam where skin melted into scales was visible. It was slightly unnerving. “My mom bought me a t-shirt with a dolphin on it. But Mizuki said dolphins are assholes.”

“Maybe Mizuki’s the asshole.”

“That’s what I said!” Iruka beamed at him. His smile stretched across his features, taking over Kakashi’s vision until everything else was out of focus. A droplet of water fell from his lip. Kakashi wondered if it tasted like fish. He liked fish, but not living ones. “But he said my hair makes me a mermaid. It’s not this long when I’m awake, though. It’s more like this.” He waved his hand somewhere in the proximity of his neck, wobbling too much for Kakashi to get an accurate picture. 

“You know he was insulting you, right?” Kakashi lifted a paw to scratch at one floppy ear. It wasn’t itchy, per se, he just had the urge to move. He didn’t know his muscles could ache even in a dream; maybe it was a subconscious remnant of his real body’s post-mission strains. Settling his paw back in the grass, he was careful to avoid a vibrant green caterpillar with black and yellow stripes that crawled along the water’s edge. “Calling you a girl?”

Iruka’s smile slowly faded. “Oh.”

Something hard lodged in Kakashi’s stomach; Obito had called him an asshole lots of times, but he never felt it before.

If he comforted a figment of his imagination, was that comforting himself by proxy?

“You can be a mermaid if you want. Or a girl.” He said awkwardly. “If he thinks that’s an insult, he’s the dumb one. Kunoichi are strong.” He thought about Tsunade of the Sannin and Uzumaki Kushina, both of whom could, and would, beat down anyone in their path. Rin wasn’t a fighter, but she was intelligent and good with chakra control. A lot better than Obito. “And… merpeople can be cool.” 

He dragged his paw across the ground, pulling up grass way too easily and exposing soft dirt below. There were more caterpillars. Dozens of them. He pushed the grass back over them.

“You think?” Iruka didn’t look hopeful. 

“Yeah. They… they’re probably good at water jutsu.” 

“Huh. I don’t know any of those.” Iruka swam closer to the edge of the pool, placing his forearms on the side and pulling himself up until he was almost nose-to-snout with Kakashi, who fought the urge to crane his head back. “Do you?”

“Of course I do.” Kakashi wanted to frown, but he wasn’t sure how well canine lips could accommodate the expression. Iruka’s wide eyes didn’t change either way. “I’m a shinobi.” 

“My parents are, too. I’ll be one, someday.” Iruka smiled. It was softer this time, not boasting. “You must be really amazing.” 

Kakashi blinked, looking away, nose twitching. He could faintly smell salt and clams, like the koi pond was part of the ocean rather than fresh water. He guessed it wasn’t a koi pond anymore, though. It was a mer-pond. An Iruka-pond. And if it was an Iruka-pond, then this wasn’t really Hatake Estate, and his dad hadn’t really died behind a few thin rice-paper walls. It didn’t matter what he told Imaginary-Iruka. “I’m going to be better than my father.” 

Because Kakashi was going to follow the rules. 

“That’s good.” Iruka’s smile widened. Kakashi wasn’t sure if he was being patronized or not. The boy pushed back from the edge of the pond, floating out to the center. “You’re pretty. Can I pet you next time?”

Kakashi was not impressed. “I’m not a dog.”

“Why not? Dogs are great!” Iruka laughed. The water around him bubbled with the sound. “You’re nicer than I thought you’d be. I’ll come back soon!” 

With that, Iruka turned in a somersault, tail cutting into the sky before disappearing beneath the surface. 

Kakashi stood on all fours, leaning forward to peer into the water, his right-front paw slipping partially into it. 

He couldn’t see Iruka, or koi, or anything living. 

Just a silver wolf and white, white fangs. 

Iruka came back to his dreams many times after that, although at different places and in different forms. One time, he had spikes along his back, which he quickly admitted were quite uncomfortable and dissolved into black sand. The next time, he was a merperson again, but they were in a hot springs. Kakashi had perched on a large rock in the middle (he wasn’t an expert, but he didn’t think hot springs typically had those) and watched Iruka play in the steamy water. The third time, the boy had a long, scaled tail as well as human legs, and they were perched on the top of a giant building. 

Another time, he was a rambunctious terrier who ran circles around Kakashi in an open field, barking playfully until Kakashi finally got up and puppy-wrestled with him, winning easily. It reminded him a bit too much of someone else, someone with a penchant for green and loud declarations about rivalry. 

The next time, Iruka was almost entirely the same as merman-Iruka, except with human legs and no scales, shorter hair that only fell to his shoulders, and a long scar that ran over the bridge of his nose. When Kakashi asked, he said he was trying something new, and he wasn’t sure if he liked it. That time, they were sitting at a kotatsu in a messy living room that smelled of freshly baked bread. 

Everytime, Kakashi was a silver wolf. 

One time, he had purple streaks on his cheeks. 

Iruka asked curiously what they were, and Kakashi didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t. 

He was pretty sure Rin had a crush on him. 

He was pretty sure he respected her, and also sure he had thought once or twice about kissing her, like any twelve-year-old boy starting the first signs of puberty. 

He was _completely_ sure Obito was in love with her. 

He was also completely sure he didn’t want to deal with any of it. 

Iruka, however, was easy to be with. He was content to splash around quietly while Kakashi closed his eyes, or keep up most of a conversation on his own, asking occasional questions that were sometimes naive, but not thoroughly stupid. 

It wasn’t bad. The dreams with Iruka were better than any others, even if Kakashi often found himself wondering during waking hours when he had become a creative enough person to dream of such a creature. 

That seemed like something Rin would do. 

Not him. 

“How come you never change?” Iruka asked.

He was a fox that night, red with white socks and bushy tail and silky fur. He and Kakashi lay on the grass beside each other, sides pressed together. Iruka’s small brown eyes were fixed on the copper-colored clouds passing over the forest canopy, while Kakashi lay on his stomach, muzzle on his paws, breathing in the astringent scent of pine needles. He had been in a lot of forests over the last few years. This one was definitely near Konoha. 

“I don’t know how to be anything else.” Kakashi murmured. One of his ears twitched as a gentle breeze rustled through the leaves. His left ear grew fully upright now, though his right one sometimes flopped down on the corner, and his paws were still too large for his slender frame. He would grow into them. 

“You can be anything you _wanna_ be.” Iruka pressed. 

Kakashi sighed through his nose, the air rustling the undergrowth and raising a stronger scent that made his nostrils twitch. About a foot away, a spiny black-and-red caterpillar crawled, crossing blades of grass like tiny mountains. “I’ve only ever wanted to be one thing.”

“A dog?”

“I’m a wolf.” He growled, a low rumble in his chest. Iruka didn’t take it seriously, if the way he wiggled until he could nuzzle Kakashi’s ear was an indication. 

Kakashi still refused to let Iruka pet him, but _some_ contact wasn’t bad. Occasionally.

It was all a dream, anyway. 

“You sure?” Iruka’s tail flicked, laying across Kakashi’s. His pointed nose pressed coldy into the sensitive inside of Kakashi’s ear. Kakashi bared his teeth, nipping lightly at Iruka’s fur in a warning that had never been heeded before, and wasn’t now. “I don’t think wolves have droopy ears.”

“Some do. When they’re young.” 

Kakashi refused to say ‘as puppies’. 

Iruka snorted. He had started to develop a teasing, sarcastic streak in the last few years. Kakashi wasn’t sure if that was his own brain trying to tell him to get a sense of humor, or if his dream figments really had started to take on a life of their own. Well, just Iruka, really. He never remembered much of his other dreams, unless they were nightmares. 

It was always possible that an enemy nin was using some new, long-range genjutsu to spy on Konoha nin in their sleep to glean information, but Kakashi was careful not to say anything confidential, and Iruka never probed.

“Fine. Whaddaya wanna be then, Wolf-san?” 

Iruka never even asked for his name. 

“A shinobi.” Kakashi responded automatically. 

“Aren’t you already one?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean I’m done.” He paused, opening his eyes. “I need to be a _better_ shinobi. I just took my jōnin test, but even that isn’t the end.”

“Did you pass? Are you gonna try to be Hokage?” 

Kakashi made a disgruntled noise and nudged Iruka’s snout until he was farther away. “They’ll tell me tomorrow, and you don’t have to be the Hokage to be strong. The Kage may be one of the most powerful shinobi in a hidden village, but they’re also chosen for political clout, and at the Daimyo’s whims. They end up doing paperwork more than fighting.” 

“Oh.” Kakashi could hear the frown in Iruka’s tone. “That doesn’t sound as cool as I thought it would.” 

They were silent for a few minutes. Birds chirped in the trees, but Kakashi couldn’t smell or see them, and the sunlight didn’t extend beyond their small clearing. It didn’t need to.

“Hey.” Iruka started, pausing with uncharacteristic hesitancy. “When you’re a big-shot jōnin… will you still talk to me?”

“Maa, I guess.” Kakashi closed his eyes and settled back into his paws. “For a figment of my imagination, you’re surprisingly hard to ignore.” 

Iruka didn’t answer. A moment later, he was gone. 

When Kakashi awoke, there was a lot more on his mind than dreams. 

Within a week, Obito was dead, and Kakashi’s eye had been replaced. 

This one cried tears of blood. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, thanks to booleanWildcard for the amazing beta. :)

Iruka could feel the howl. 

It reverberated in his bones, hummed just beneath his skin. 

Initially, he had thought of it like hundreds of tiny threads, reaching out and tugging at his consciousness while he dropped off to sleep. After he met Wolf for the first time in the dreams, it had become a recognizable wolf’s howl even that never quite reached his ears, sticking somewhere in the crevices of his mind instead. 

He didn't know if the sound had always been a howl that he’d simply never recognized without context, or if the wolf had altered his perception and it was really the same noiseless call it had always been. 

Either way, it was _his_ call. The sign that Wolf was ready to be found. 

For a year and a half, the howl didn’t come. 

Iruka didn't know why. 

When he had asked Wolf if becoming a jōnin would mean he stopped talking to not-even-genin-Iruka, he hadn't really expected it to happen. But it had.

Wolf had called him a figment. Iruka didn't know what that word meant, but he knew 'imagination'. It meant things that weren't real, things you fantasized. 

But Iruka was very, very real, and Wolf was, too. He had met him once, even if they had never spoken. He remembered those gray eyes. They were a little different now, a little older, a little wiser, a little more filled with memories and salves to fill the holes; but they were still that boy's. 

Even if Iruka hadn't seen him for almost three years.

Plus, he first met Wolf only a few months after the graveyard boy. They _had_ to be the same person. 

If Wolf was real, and he didn't call... did that mean he was dead?

Or did he not believe in Iruka? Was he too grown up now to care about a 'figment'?

Iruka tried to find Wolf on his own. He searched in his dreams, crossed what felt like miles of forests and lakes and ruins. He imagined the howl as clearly as he could when he fell asleep, even tried to make it himself, though he had no clue how. 

Sometimes, Iruka almost believed he could hear him. 

Then the howl was inevitably swallowed up by visions of crimson and swirling black tomoe. They sucked Iruka in, threatened to suffocate him with oppressive force. They sapped his very life with every moment he lingered, until he had no choice but to wake up or be consumed.

Those nights grew so bad that he eventually stopped searching for fear of them.

He didn't see Wolf again. 

Not until the ruins became part of his waking world, too. 

* * *

The last thing Kakashi remembered was Boar taking over the watch. By luck of the draw, it was the fourth night in a row Kakashi had taken a middle shift, meaning he was sleeping in three hour increments or less, and at whatever random times they could afford. Following the Kyuubi attack, there were few ANBU out in the field, so the ones left were stretched thin. 

Kakashi was glad he was one of them.

The rest were all dead. 

The last people who had loved Kakashi, the last people that he could consider more than assigned comrades. 

Killed because Kakashi couldn’t protect them. Because he had been too weak. 

He didn’t want to see the remnants of Konoha that were left. 

He didn’t want to see what of the Hatake Estate had survived. 

He hoped it had burned to the ground, and at the same time, he felt as though he might lose the very last part of Hatake Kakashi if it did. 

His little jōnin apartment was intact, but it would be a long while until he slept there again. Not until Konoha’s borders were deemed secure once more, and that wasn’t happening anytime soon.

Kakashi thought it would take an eternity for sleep to come that night, as it had in all the last, but perhaps his body had finally decided to take mercy on him. He remembered counting only twenty-seven of Owl’s deep, even breaths, before the world went black. 

At first, Kakashi had no clue he was asleep. There was no light wherever he was, pitch black surrounding him on all sides. His brain flitted through genjutsu and yin chakra and a dozen other possibilities.

Then he realized, with the sort of uncanny revelation that most would attribute to deities, that it was dark because he was buried. 

Was he dead?

The idea rang around his hollow skull, bouncing off bone without generating any friction within his mind. He knew logically that the thought should be frightening, but all he felt was resignation. 

He had failed Konoha once again.

But no— 

Someone was crying. 

He didn’t know anyone who would cry if he died.

Despite the dirt filling his nostrils, the hundreds of pounds of pressure upon his ribs, the grit of clay and soil caving into his mouth as he clawed his way up from the ground—Kakashi could breathe just fine.

He didn’t have to think about what direction to go. It didn’t matter which way was up or down; he needed to find the crying person. Nothing else mattered, even if it led him straight into the depths of hell. 

Kakashi had already let down so many. 

When he broke through the surface, the muffled cries sharpened to heaving sobs. Clumps of dirt and tiny beetles matted Kakashi’s fur. He wasn’t even certain when his human body had been replaced with the once-familiar wolf, but like so many other things, it didn’t matter—not in the face of the few things that did.

Iruka was there. 

Iruka mattered.

Kakashi couldn’t tell it was the boy by any physical sense—merely by another piece of innate knowledge dropped into his awareness. 

Iruka was nothing like he remembered, and yet Kakashi could see each detail of him in an overlay of the creature before him. 

Iruka’s voice was nearly two years older and broken by heaving gasps, wet coughs, and the unnatural, trembling chimes of so many horrible bells. He smelled like ash and brick. His shoulders were wider, but hunched and curled in on themselves. His hair was tangled and knotted, falling between his shoulder-blades, where there lay the greatest change of all: 

Two wings. Slender, skeletal, with bird-like bones. A rice-paper-thin black membrane connected them, with veins like trails of ink. The wings seemed so fragile, as if they would break in a mild wind. 

There was no wind.

As Kakashi stepped closer, Iruka tucked them in, folding them into his body as if that would hide them from sight. He dropped his face to his knees, pressing into rumpled sweatpants. They were stained with copper and smelled like salt, from tears this time rather than the ocean. The fabric muffled his cries, mouth open and biting into the cloth, but it couldn’t stifle as well as however many feet of dirt Kakashi had dug through to get to him. 

It wouldn’t keep Kakashi away. 

Nothing would. He hadn’t been there when Obito needed him. Nor Rin, Kushina, Minato.

He didn’t know what he was supposed to be doing here, how he was supposed to offer comfort to an unfamiliar quarter of his mind, but it was better than doing nothing. Better than wasting away.

Sitting beside Iruka, Kakashi glanced at their surroundings for the first time. 

A wasteland. 

It wasn’t quite like the deserts in Suna, with soft sand and stone and mountainous cliffs. This was an endless outstretch of beige rubble, like an ancient civilization gone to ruin, with dead trees and hard-packed sand through which no water could seep. 

The only sign of life was a lone butterfly dipping close to the ground, landing for a moment before taking off again. Its leathery wings held feathered edges, flapping in uneven increments. They were shaded in tawny browns, orange and crimson spots like dripping blood. It’s long yellow proboscis darted out to lick at stones or sand, moving on when it didn’t find the rotten flesh it sought. 

That was the world that Iruka faced, at least. 

Behind them, where Kakashi had come from, was the hill on which Minato and Kushina died. It was empty and yet vast in all it contained. 

Somehow, Kakashi knew that, within that hill, there sat the cliff upon which Rin had taken her life. Buried further, beneath the cliff and hill, like a shaken foundation, were the crumbled rocks that had crushed Obito, the ones that should have crushed _Kakashi_. 

Deeper still, close to this earth’s core, were rice paper walls and a stained tatami.

The pit from which Kakashi had crawled was beneath it all, the pointed dagger upon which all else rested. 

It seemed like a betrayal of the worst sort that he had been able to breathe through it all, through the dirt that he gouged to find Iruka. It was cruel, shameful treachery that he was allowed to breathe now, _still_ , when none of the others could.

That world, with its many layers, was Kakashi’s hell. This wasteland was Iruka’s. 

Why Kakashi’s exhausted creation needed a hell of his own, Kakashi didn’t know. 

But he wanted to destroy it.

It took an eternity for Iruka’s tears to dry. He wiped shiny snot on his pants and rubbed at his eyes with clenched fists. Then he reached out a shaking, open hand, without looking, and placed it gently between Kakashi’s ears. 

When Kakashi didn’t move, Iruka did. His calloused palm slowly stroked Kakashi’s head, rubbed against his cheek. It shook out small particles and debris, felt the perfectly triangular shape of his fully-grown ears. 

Iruka’s tremulous chuckle and accompanying words were muffled by his knees. “Maybe you are a wolf after all.”

Kakashi nudged Iruka’s neck with his nose. Iruka flinched and pulled his hand away to rub at the spot, looking over at Kakashi with red-rimmed eyes and cracked, swollen lips. The scar that Kakashi had once seen on his features, the one that crossed his cheeks and nose, was present once again. Tear tracks streaked clean lines through the dust that covered it, catching on the scar and pooling to each side of the recess. 

“And you’re a mermaid with wings.”

Iruka’s mouth twitched into a wry, crooked smile, before falling back. He looked forward, out into the desert. The air shimmered like heat waves, though Kakashi couldn’t feel it. 

He felt cold. 

“I think I’m a bat. I wanted to fly, but this is all I could come up with.” The wings spasmed, extending a few inches before shrinking back. “They’re too weak to hold me up.”

His response was automatic. “Then train them.”

Iruka glanced over at him, eyes narrowing and tone cutting in a way they never had been before. “It’s not so easy for all of us. I wasn’t born with a ton of chakra or clan jutsu or one-on-one training since I could walk. My parents are—” His jaw clenched, biting his tongue on the words. He continued, quieter. “They _were_ the best people I ever knew. I’m proud of them. But... I don’t know if I can be like them.” 

Kakashi couldn’t relate. 

Even to himself, apparently—though it was getting harder and harder to remember that Iruka wasn’t real.

Kakashi was born to a legend, taught by another, and had never considered a future beyond serving Konoha. Nothing else was an option. Though, that wasn’t to say it came without effort. Kakashi was taught from an early age how to train himself, how to break himself down to build himself up, how to take damage and inflict it. 

There were others, like Might Guy, who had done even more. Ones who were born with practically nothing and chose their goals, then worked to achieve them. 

Kakashi had never chosen his at all. 

Kakashi always believed that Iruka was a fictitious person, a part of Kakashi that he had unconsciously isolated and starved until it could only exist in his unconscious mind. But, if he were to be honest, to reject conventional logic and look internally with an open mind, open heart... 

He didn’t think he had anyone like Iruka inside of him. 

“What do you want to be?” Kakashi asked.

Iruka dug his bare toes into the ground, disrupting the line where dirt and sand met. He stared at them as if he could dig up an entire well if he just wished it hard enough. 

Maybe he could. 

“I don’t know.” Iruka finally shrugged. He scratched the scar over his nose, an action Kakashi had seen him do a few times before, but had never connected to the invisible mark. “I want my parents to be proud of me. I wanna protect people, like they did. I don’t know if I want to kill people, though.”

“No one wants to kill. Not if they’re human.” Kakashi laid down, blades of grass cold as ice against his belly. 

Iruka’s feet were covered now in dirt and sand, browns of all shades. He didn’t seem to care. “Or wolf?”

Kakashi thought of the people that had died by his hand. The ones that hadn’t.

“Or wolf. You just do what you have to do. To survive, and to protect your pack.”

“I guess I gotta find a pack I want to protect, huh?” The question sounded rhetorical. Iruka leaned back on his palms and looked up at the sky. Black clouds rolled over the horizon, from the wasteland and heading towards them. “I tried to come see you, many times. But I couldn’t get in.” 

It had been nearly two years since Iruka appeared in Kakashi’s dreams. Since Hannabi Bridge changed them all to nightmares. 

Sometimes the brain shuts down part of itself to stay whole. 

Kakashi was no stranger to that.

“You have scars now.” Iruka said.

Kakashi glanced up. The boy reached out with dirty hands, gently cupping the wolf’s face, fingers curling around his cheeks. His thumbs stroked tenderly below Kakashi’s eye left, down his jaw, up to a clip in his right ear. 

Obito’s eye wasn’t in this dream, but the scar from it was. Along with many others. As Iruka touched him, Kakashi became aware of a fine network of them lacing his entire body, threading through tufts of fur in thin, pale lines, like from tanto or katana. 

He didn’t have all of those when he was awake. 

Maybe they were the ones that normally sat beneath his skin, put on display for Iruka to see. 

Did Kakashi want to be exposed?

“I have scars, too.” Iruka smiled. It looked like it hurt more than his tears. “Let’s try to heal them, ok?”

Kakashi woke abruptly. The scent of decaying leaves and pine needles filled his nose, filtered through a thin layer of cloth and another of porcelain. 

He reached up a gloved hand, running fingers under the ANBU mask, pressing deep to feel beneath the softer inner shell. 

Scars were no longer etched into his skin. 

That didn’t mean they were gone.

“Hound.” Boar said again, crouched on a tree branch several feet away. “Time to move out.” 

That night as they ran, on the backs of his comrades, Kakashi’s periphery overlaid skeletal wings and long brown hair.

It was a few months later when Kakashi learned for certain that Iruka wasn’t a figment of his imagination. 

At least, _mostly_ for certain. Kakashi had an excellent memory, and he clearly recalled the entirety of the day, from start to finish. He hadn’t taken a nap or been knocked unconscious, poisoned, genjutsu’d, or any of the other various things that might cause him to hallucinate. A quick check of his senses also told him that all of them were working properly, giving him exactly the feedback he would expect after stepping into the Hokage’s office, so it wasn’t likely to be a dream.

Most telling of all, Kakashi wasn’t a wolf. 

Well, unless he counted the porcelain mask.

At first, he didn’t even realize it was Iruka. He categorized each individual present according to threat level, separating them into hazards to body or classified information, and then shifted his attention to the Hokage, awaiting the signal to relay his report. If there was time for pleasantries, Kakashi wouldn’t have entered the office while others were present at all, but there wasn’t. It wasn’t his place to judge who was privy to the information he held, only that its relay was critical. 

Then, Hiruzen spoke.

“You may go, Team Six. You are free to pick up a new mission as soon as your reparations are complete.” He smiled, wizened lips curling around his pipe. 

“Nice going, Iruka.” A short boy muttered, jabbing his elbow into another one, who jabbed him back just as hard before the jōnin-sensei forced them apart and pushed them towards the door.

ANBU weren’t supposed to show a reaction. They were weapons, their opinions and observations left unexpressed except to meet the needs of the mission. It was only those long ingrained habits that kept Kakashi from turning his head and staring in shock. Instead, he glanced out of the corner of his eye as the genin filed out. 

It _was_ Iruka. _His_ Iruka—but there were differences.

His brown hair was shorter, and pulled into a high ponytail rather than hanging loose. His skin was a shade darker than Kakashi recalled, perhaps from the summer sun, with a warm undertone like cocobolo wood. His eyelashes were longer, his arms skinnier, his nose a touch more broad and marked with the same scar that Kakashi had come to associate with Iruka’s most vulnerable moments. 

The team looked at Hound as they passed, taking in the daunting sight of the red and white mask. The jōnin nodded in respectful recognition. The genin did not. 

One showed awe. 

One showed fear. 

The one that mattered showed curiosity.

There was no contact as Iruka passed—but Kakashi could feel the disturbance in the air. He could hear soft breathing and footsteps, smell something faint and unidentifiable, but real enough.

Very real.

Kakashi’s report to the Hokage came through numb lips, his heart pounding a rhythm too vicious, too visceral, to be a fabrication.

Iruka didn’t come into his dreams that night.

Disappointment and relief fought in Kakashi’s brain until a nightmare consumed them both.

After that, Kakashi started listening. 

He heard more than he ever thought possible. 

Umino Iruka, with a hitai-ate still shiny and new. He was the son of a chūnin and a tokubetsu jōnin, both killed in the Kyuubi attack. He was also a known trouble-maker, but a favorite of the Sandaime starting after he was orphaned. The kid was reported to be decent at all of the basics, pretty good with traps used for pranks, but no specialties or areas of high proficiency. His genjutsu was weaker than his ninjutsu or taijutsu, making that an unlikely avenue by which he and Kakashi were communicating. 

It could have been a kekkei genkai, but Kakashi had never heard of it. Dreams would obviously be the realm of yin, but there was nothing he could see that would combine with that to make dreamwalking. It would have to be a specific jutsu, perhaps a Yamanaka-style, which Iruka shouldn’t have been capable of at such a young age even if he had been part of the clan. 

Maybe it wasn’t Iruka in his dreams at all. Maybe Kakashi had heard about the kid and subconsciously built a character around him, absorbing information and disseminating it into his dreams. It wasn’t a _completely_ insane theory. It was slightly more plausible than Iruka sneaking into Kakashi’s bed at night and whispering in his ear, at least. Particularly since Kakashi was very rarely in his bed to begin with.

In the end, trying to rationalize it did him no good, and the doubts he tried to latch onto each slipped through his fingers like soap.

Iruka was real. Somehow, Kakashi had known that for a while, whether he wanted to recognize it or not. 

The only question was what to do about it.

He could foresee the events that would play out if he told the Hokage, or his ANBU Captain. 

If he let the Yamanakas get ahold of his mind, they might never let go.

There hadn’t been anything dangerous about Iruka in the last five years. No indication that he was anything less than innocent. It wouldn’t be dangerous in the future. 

Even when Iruka asked for his name. 

“We could meet. Outside, you know.” A purple pebble skipped across the creek’s surface, making no sound and never sinking, sitting atop the water as if it were a pane of glass. “You have my name. You could find me if you want. Or I could find you.”

Kakashi’s breath caught. He looked up from the clear water running across smooth stones and over his paws. It felt blissfully cool, though the rest of his body had no discernible temperature. 

Until he heard Iruka’s question, at least. Then, his chest felt like an ice shard had pierced his sternum, while heat flooded his face in contrast. 

Iruka might have always known Kakashi was real, if not who he actually was. 

Kakashi was the one who had been living under a delusion. 

He wasn’t anymore. 

So he wondered.

For an entire minute, he allowed himself to consider the idea. He imagined meeting the boy he had seen in the Sandaime’s office. He imagined introducing himself, imagined Iruka looking up at him and—

And seeing him. 

Actually _seeing_ him. 

Learning that the Wolf was Hatake Kakashi, the son of the White Fang. 

Kakashi imagined Iruka figuring out that he didn’t actually have a fascination with wolves, but a whole host of father-related traumas and dead teammates behind him. He imagined Iruka connecting “I’m going to be a better shinobi than my father” to the man that had killed himself in his study, laying in a pool of his own congealed blood for his eight-year-old son to find. He imagined Iruka hearing the whispers of ‘Friend-Killer Kakashi’ and connecting it to his dream-friend, imagined seeing in those warm brown eyes not curiosity, but fear, or disgust, or—perhaps worst of all— _awe_. 

He had already shown Iruka so much. In small ways, in tiny admissions that Iruka absorbed without a blink of an eye, but that carried the entire weight of Kakashi’s wounds within them. He had trusted him unknowingly, unwittingly, with more than he had any other living soul, specifically because he hadn’t _believed_ Iruka was real. And Iruka had accepted it all without question.

In reality, Kakashi wore masks of cold porcelain and stifling cloth and a history five miles long. Together, these things concealed all truths.

Iruka, right now, held more of Kakashi than a name ever would. He was the only thing that stopped Kakashi nightmares—both the ones that came with sleep, and those that came with dawn.

“I’m sorry.” 

Iruka’s hopeful expression fell. His body tensed, webbed toes forming an obstacle for the current to overcome, and something sharp dug into his next question. “Why?”

Kakashi looked up to the sun, shining bright down on them but not reflecting off the surface of the water. It didn’t hurt his eyes to look at. Iruka would. “I’ll never turn you from my dreams again. But that’s all I can do.” 

Iruka bit his lower lip and clenched his hands into fists. “No one else has time for me anymore, either. Orphans in Konoha are a dime a dozen, right? No one cares what happens to us, as long as we’re still willing to die for them.” He spat bitter sparks to the ground, literal ones that Kakashi could see, vitriol forming into oil-like splotches on the dirt and the khaki of Iruka’s shorts. “I thought you were different.”

Was Kakashi different? He was also an orphan of Konoha, had lost his last parent at an even younger age than Iruka.

However, he had never been cast aside. He was already a chūnin by that time, already leading teams and taking lives and playing a part in a larger war. He hadn’t needed anyone. Not like Iruka had. 

“I’m a shinobi of Konoha as well. I’ll die for her just as you will.” 

Iruka flinched. Kakashi continued. 

“Believe me, Iruka.” He said quietly, stepping across the stones to reach the water’s edge. He looked up to see Iruka’s ducked face and placed a large, heavy paw on the boy’s knee. “You have an important place in the village. You’ll find it. And I’ll be in your dreams when you do.”

If he was still alive. If Iruka would still have him.

Perhaps Iruka heard the unspoken words, because his features crumpled, all fight leaving him as quickly as it had come. No tears formed, but then again, Iruka was better at manipulating the dreams than Kakashi was. Always had been. 

Iruka had the power to change not just himself, but the world.

Kakashi hoped he was around to see it when he did. 

“Your scars keep changing.” Iruka said. A year post-Kyuubi and his wings were larger, the bones stronger, the membrane no longer translucent and veiny. A fine velveteen fuzz covered its surface, like chinchilla fur or the down of chicks.

Iruka leaned forward, careful not to topple off the ledge, or worse, drop his popsicle. Their cave was several hundred feet above ground, and while Iruka showed no fear at the heights, he also had given no indication his wings were yet ready for flight. Kakashi didn’t want to put his imaginary paws to the test, either. 

“Except for this one.” Iruka gently ran his thumb beneath Kakashi’s left eye. Obito’s eye. 

That was another mercy; in these dreams, the sharingan never said a word. 

“Do you want to keep it?”

Kakashi tilted his head at the question, inadvertently pushing his cheek and whiskers into Iruka’s hand. 

His immediate instinct was to say no, of course he didn’t want the sharingan. If he could have chosen, he would have never had it to begin with. It constantly sucked his chakra, and every second of use was a million tiny hammers pounding away at his skull. 

Worse, it was a constant reminder of his mistakes. When Fugaku requested to have it removed, Kakashi had very nearly given in. 

But it was Obito’s way to see the world. 

He would fight tooth and nail to keep that from being taken away. 

It was an incredible relief to not have the drain on him in these dreams, to not suffer the visual flashbacks that accompanied the sharingan when his mind was off-guard. But in the real world, the eye was part of him, always would be. It was fitting that the scar, even in his dreams, remained. 

“What about yours?” Kakashi asked instead. The mark over Iruka’s nose hadn’t disappeared since the wasteland. In fact, most of his form hadn’t changed, except for the strength of his wings, the soft coat on them. He had tried a prehensile tail once, but he admitted to finding it difficult to control. Kakashi had never been less than fully capable in his wolf skin, whatever that said about him. 

“I’m starting to like it.” Iruka retrieved his hand to rub at the scar self-consciously. His cheeks pinkened and he averted his gaze. “Well, maybe not. But it’s harder to erase these days.” He bit into the yellow popsicle, either immune to the cold, or purposefully refusing to process the tooth pain that should have accompanied it.

“You have no trouble changing everything else.” Kakashi pointed out, watching as sticky juice dripped over Iruka’s knuckles. It must have been summer, from the shorts and sleeveless tank-top Iruka had chosen. His wings emerged seamlessly from the white fabric of his shirt, as if grown from it. 

Iruka shrugged. “It’s easier to change your surroundings than yourself.”

Kakashi looked out over the tree canopy, into the distance where the sun remained stationary, hanging as if from a string in the center of an indigo sky.

“You can control yourself.” He disagreed. He wasn’t sure which world they were talking about anymore. “You can’t control others.” 

“No, but you _can_ control where you are, what you’re doing. Smiling when you’re sad is easier than suddenly just—” Iruka tightened his free hand in a fist and then popped his fingers open like a mini-explosion. “—not being sad, right? And sometimes the emotion will follow. I hope so, anyway.” He added in a mutter. 

“A mask can’t change what’s on the inside. Only what others see.” 

“Hmm, I dunno. Have you tried it?”

Kakashi barked a bitter laugh. “Once or twice.” 

“Were the masks ones you _wanted_ to wear?” Iruka glanced at him sideways. “I think, in order to change, you have to know exactly what you want and work towards that. Which is my problem.” He bit off another part of the popsicle, somehow never reaching the stick that held it. “I dunno what I wanna be. Not like you do, Wolf-san.” 

Kakashi wasn’t sure that was the truth at all. 

He had never decided to be a wolf, or a shinobi. They were just facts that transcended life and dreams. Nothing more. 

When Kakashi was seventeen, he asked Tenzō what form he took in his dreams. 

“I don’t dream much.” Tenzō frowned, looking up from his bedroll. There were a lot of excellent things about working with Tenzō, one of which was the dependable source of shelter. Rain pattered around them, but their wooden cabin remained watertight.

“Humor me.”

“Don’t I always?” Tenzō sighed, plopping down cross-legged on the floor. “I don’t think I have an identity in them, senpai. I’m in first-person, looking out at my surroundings, exactly like when I’m awake.”

“So you’re human?”

Tenzō’s eyebrows raised. “As far as I’m aware.”

Kakashi let it drop. 

For someone without a name or clan or history, Tenzō had a firm grasp on who he was. 

Kakashi did, too—but he wondered if something else might not be better.

Eight years, and their dreamscape had never before taken the form of a swamp.

Kakashi wished that had remained the case.

He trudged through mud that reached nearly to his belly, melting beneath paws and staining light fur. A pungent scent of sulfur filled his nostrils, swirling noxiously in his lungs, but he trudged on. He tried to form chakra in his paws, to balance him atop the sludge like walking on water, but apparently Wolf-Kakashi had only his fangs for weapons. There was no telltale build of energy in his paw pads, no tingling swell of life force begging to be used. He wouldn’t even be able to jump onto a tree branch like this. 

Kakashi vaguely remembered learning to walk up trees in his youth. Smooth platforms like concrete walls were easiest, but his father had started him on the white oak on the Hatake Estate, with rough bark and twining branches. He couldn’t recall how long it had taken him to learn, but he remembered the sun setting and his father going in to cook dinner while Kakashi continued, perspiration sticking to his skin like sap. 

When Kakashi finally came inside, after putting his mark on the tip of the highest branch, the food was cold.

It was miso soup with eggplant. His favorite.

Sakumo had always known Kakashi would succeed, no matter how long it took. 

That had been comforting. Now, Kakashi was stranded in unknown terrain with strange scents and colors—the sounds of bubbling liquid from underground gasses leaching to the surface, an endless mix of browns and vague greens with too many shadows beneath the trees.

And there was no sign of Iruka. 

Kakashi couldn’t be sure why he chose to travel the direction he did, as the shadows had no particular angle that would indicate to him the position of the sun—but he was certain he was walking where he needed to go. 

He just needed to reach it. Before something else reached him. 

There were rabbits in the underbrush, prints from tiny animals on the surface of the mud, their weight lower or their feet wider or their chakra control good enough that they didn’t sink in like Kakashi did. A butterfly followed along Kakashi’s side for a while, fawn and white wings that were coated in a textured, moss-or-mold green, spines coming off the back of its wing like additional legs.

Where there was prey, there were predators also. 

Normally, that predator was Kakashi, but this wasn’t his territory. The fur along his spine rose in contrast to the spots that mud had matted down, gray eyes flickering across the endless expanse, ears oscillating directions. 

It wasn’t until the trees began to thin and daylight streamed in that Kakashi knew for what he was searching. 

Iruka sat on a dry, hard-dirt island in the middle of a large watery area, kneeling facing away from Kakashi. His wings were sparsely feathered these days, beginning to resemble a crow’s more than a bat’s. They spread around him on either side, framing his torso. Over the upper arch of the wings, Kakashi could see carved rock. 

The memorial stone. 

“Took you long enough.” Iruka glanced over his shoulder, folding his wings in tight when they obstructed his view.

“Maa, you could have chosen friendlier terrain.” Kakashi’s calves (did wolves have calves?) burned with the effort of slogging through the mud. It became thinner the closer Kakashi drew to the island, until he was paddling through murky water. When he got close enough Iruka reached down to help him up, hooking both of his hands behind Kakashi’s hind legs, heedless of the dirt that transferred to his once-pristine skin. 

“I chose the memorial. I think the swamp is you.” 

Kakashi didn’t recall being in any swamps like this for at least two years, since he was sixteen. Then again, Iruka may not have been in a swamp like this at _any_ point. 

Kakashi knew what it was like to struggle to pull a corpse from the mud before it sank too low. He knew what it was like to hear the squishy plop as the suction broke so he could haul the body onto his shoulder, waiting until his teammate could find a dry place to lay the transport scroll.

Maybe he had chosen this.

Disturbingly, there was no sound of dripping water even as Kakashi’s tail came loose and spread drops onto the platform. He thought of the shake that the newest addition to his pack, Shiba, did after baths, and twisted his body and head rapidly. Iruka held a hand up to shield his eyes, grimacing. 

“Your fur is gonna get matted with all that mud.” Iruka said when he was done, scooping a finger through the hollow of the wolf’s ankle. Kakashi couldn’t feel anything despite the visual confirmation of touch, as if the mud were blocking all sensation, numbing the flesh underneath. 

Kakashi was fairly certain Shiba would be licking himself at this point, but he didn’t want to find out if the mud tasted like mud or something far worse. 

“Maa, it doesn’t matter. It’ll all disappear when I wake up.” Kakashi dismissed. 

“That doesn’t mean you should have to suffer it now.” Iruka countered. He scooted on his knees close to the edge. Dipping his hand in the water, he pulled up a shallow wooden bowl. The fluid inside was perfectly clear when he shuffled back to Kakashi. “I hope you’re better at taking care of yourself when you’re awake.”

He was. He ate all the necessary rations. He drank plenty of water. He worked out. He slept. He bathed. He trained. He let the medics treat him when necessary. 

He was fine.

Laying on his belly, Kakashi watched as Iruka slowly poured the water over his front paws. The liquid came away a light brown, travelling off the side of the platform in a ruler-straight line, leaving no trail when Iruka turned away to refill his bowl. 

The first thing Kakashi truly _felt_ was Iruka massaging his paw pads, working the soil from between each toe, even scraping his fingernail against a particularly stubborn fleck on his sensitive dewclaw, being careful not to bend it awkwardly. Each time Iruka refilled the bowl, he went a little further down Kakashi’s body, soothing away debris and detangling fine silver fur and imbuing feeling into deadened muscle. 

Kakashi wondered what it would be like to be cared for that way in human form. To feel the heat of bath water, to feel a bare hand moving across his skin with deliberate, tender attention. 

He would probably be too busy expecting a stab in the back to appreciate it. Showing weakness was an animal’s death sentence, predator or prey. It was only in the safety of these dreams, these moments between existences, that he could forget that. 

“You don’t have to be alone when you’re awake, you know.” Iruka said quietly, easing flecks of mud from the tuft of Kakashi’s tail.

“I’m not.” Kakashi couldn’t see Iruka’s expresion, but he felt how fingers stilled on his fur before resuming motion. “I have a pack now.”

Pakkun, Shiba, Bull, his ANBU team… They weren’t the sort of companions most people would consider friends, but they were creatures he wanted to protect. 

That was more than he’d had in a very long time. 

“I’m glad.” Iruka leaned forward, scratching between Kakashi’s ears. His smile was warm and genuine. “I’m still looking for mine.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuing thanks to booleanWildcard, and NKI_Stories for her advice and ideas and putting up with my indecision lol. I'm very grateful for both of you. <3

When Iruka was five, he wanted to make tea for the beautiful boy with empty gray eyes.

When Iruka was six, he found that boy in his dreams. He never did make that boy any tea, but he believed that someone had. He saw light in those eyes that hadn’t been before, and that was enough. 

When Iruka was ten, his entire world was ripped from him, and for the very first time, Iruka wished that someone was around to make tea for _him_. 

When Iruka was twelve, he realized he wanted Wolf to be that person.

When he was fourteen, he realized that it wasn’t enough for _someone_ to make tea for his wolf; _Iruka_ wanted to make it.

By the time he was sixteen, he had seen enough glimpses of their harsh world to understand that it might never be possible.

That didn’t change anything. 

He still wanted to be that person.

Wolf was older than Iruka by at least a couple years. He had silver hair, pale skin, and dark gray eyes. He had carried a tanto on his back as a child, secured by straps across his chest; the sword made Iruka think he was a weapons specialist, although his ninjutsu was also above par since he had executed a perfect shunshin in a single blurred moment.

The only other clues were what Iruka had learned in the dreams. Wolf was a jōnin, and very active duty if his inconsistent sleep schedule was anything to go by—possibly, even ANBU. 

Iruka knew enough by sixteen to understand that ANBU weren’t just the strongest shinobi Konoha had to offer, but those who sacrificed the most. Those chosen for ANBU were without lovers or children, and sometimes they didn’t live long enough to accrue either. They lived behind a mask, and Iruka didn’t know for certain, but he had heard tale of ANBU who hadn’t returned to the village in years, living undercover in foreign lands and spying on other nations from within their very midst. 

Wolf was strong. He was a child prodigy. The only family he had ever spoken of was his father, and Iruka didn’t remember any mention of him since Wolf’s ears still flopped.

The reason he hid his waking self from Iruka might not have been out of a desire for anonymity, but a requirement beyond his control. 

Iruka wouldn’t press. 

He would wait. He would wonder. 

He would keep the kettle hot and the tea fresh, and when his wolf was ready to take a drink—Iruka would be there to fill him.

* * *

Uchiha Itachi had been part of Kakashi’s team for less than two years when he was promoted. He was a prodigy. While his technical skills weren’t much beyond what Kakashi’s had been at a similar age, his mastery of the sharingan and position among his clan had propelled him quickly to a high status within ANBU ranks. 

Just like Kakashi, Itachi had never truly been a child.

He certainly wasn’t one by the time Kakashi met him.

Itachi was patient, poised, and—miraculously—had enough personal connections to keep him tethered to human emotion. While the majority of their missions together had been spent in companionable silence, Itachi found cause to mention (twice each) his younger brother and his cousin (Shisui of the Body Flicker, a name even Kakashi knew) with something _almost_ bordering a smile on his face. 

There was no one that Kakashi thought of with a smile. 

There was someone he _dreamed_ about. 

Did Iruka think of Wolf with a smile?

The greatest influence Kakashi had on this world, outside of steel and blood—the only person who would remember Kakashi without a single thought of death or lightning or a stolen eye—and he would never know what happened if Kakashi died. Iruka would never visit the memorial stone and trace a name, because to him, none of them would be Wolf. 

It was a comfort. 

It _was_ a comfort, until Iruka made chūnin, until he was accepted on B-ranks and then A-ranks—until he began travelling roads Kakashi didn’t know, into abysses he couldn’t see—until he walked paths that would lead him straight into the dens of lions. 

What was a single, imaginary wolf against that?

Iruka may never know which name gracing the memorial stone was his companion’s; Kakashi would.

Kakashi was on a mission when Shisui committed suicide. 

Kakashi was on a mission when Obito’s clan was obliterated from the earth, except for a seven-year-old boy and a mass murderer. 

A mass murderer Kakashi had trained.

He supposed he should be grateful that Itachi had the humanity to spare his younger brother, if living in that situation could indeed be considered a mercy. 

The whispers said it wasn’t. 

Kakashi knew it was. 

He was no fool; there were plenty of things worse than death. But as a child, Sasuke would have an opportunity to grow, to find new reasons for living. 

So many others had never been given that chance.

The first night back in Konoha was the first night Kakashi had actually _slept_ after weeks in which his team swam through sand, tracking a group of targets around the outskirts of the Land of Wind. He expected Obito’s sharingan to assault him with an endless repetition of red lips, blank eyes, swirling tomoe, lightning, crows, chakra flickering out of existence— 

Instead, he found Iruka. 

It took Kakashi a few moments to recognize what he was seeing; he had spent so little time in his life between these four walls, and most of it when he was barely old enough to form lasting memories. Logic deciphered it for him when recall failed, but there was no doubt the location had been of Iruka’s choosing.

It was one of the Academy’s classrooms. Whether it was one Kakashi had ever entered, he couldn’t say. 

Papers and writing utensils were scattered across all flat surfaces, except the clear spot of desk upon which Kakashi had appeared. Colorful paper airplanes joined them, along with wads of old chewing gum and a single leaf-green chrysalis that might have been the way-stage between caterpillar and butterfly. It hung from the underside of a window, sunlight turning the edges translucent. The shadow of an amorphous shape twisted within. The chalkboard held writings that couldn’t quite form in Kakashi’s mind, rough lines growing fuzzy and blurred when he tried to decipher individual kana.

This must have been Iruka’s childhood. 

It wasn’t Kakashi’s. 

Iruka was perched on the podium, somehow managing to sit on top, legs dangling off the front, without tipping the entire thing over. Part of it had to have been dream-magic, but another might have been the large, fully-feathered wings that spread from his shoulder blades, held aloft and keeping him balanced. 

They were beautiful. That was the first word that came to Kakashi’s mind. Black fuzz had been replaced with lush plumage, shades of tawny browns combining with black and near-white, leafing together and giving the appearance of owl wings. In all of their dreams up to this point, Iruka’s hair had been long, reaching some midpoint between back and waist. Now, a tie restrained it in a high ponytail, only a few inches longer than Kakashi knew he wore it in reality. 

For the first time, Iruka also appeared in uniform—chūnin vest, shinobi sandals, and Konoha hitai-ate, all straightened to absolute perfection. 

The only impurity lay in the scar across his nose; it ran deep and dark, drawing Kakashi’s attention before raising it to sorrel eyes.

Eyes that watched him.

“Your scar.” Iruka murmured. 

As if his words had spoken the reality into Kakashi’s consciousness, he became aware of a sensation he had never experienced in the dreamworld before, at least not with the sharp clarity of the waking: 

Pain. 

Obito’s eye was still absent, as it always was, but the scar was etched deeper than before, stinging as if it were fresh again. Beads of crimson blossomed along the raw wound, which split his furred cheek, the thin, vulnerable skin of his throat, and reached finality just above heart. 

In a form without a sharingan, Kakashi knew what it meant—Obito was crying.

When he didn’t respond, Iruka apparently made his own assumptions. “You heard?”

“Yes.” He acknowledged, sitting back on his haunches. His tail curled closely to his body, while he watched Iruka with keen eyes.

“Only one boy left.” Thick emotion broiled beneath the surface of Iruka’s voice, so different from the playful bubbles it once brought. “Seven years old. He’s an orphan now.” 

“He’ll be taken care of.” Kakashi said coolly. “He’ll have the entirety of the Uchiha fortune at his disposal, and a ward if he needs one. They won’t allow the last of a great clan to go to waste.” 

“His clan shouldn’t matter.” Iruka replied fiercely, leaning forward and waving a hand with hostile aggression. The podium beneath him wobbled. “And that’s—what about his mental health? What about having someone who cares about him beyond his name? He’s a _child_ , Wolf, not a goddamn _resource_.” 

“He is both.” Kakashi contradicted. Fury twisted Iruka’s scar, but Kakashi didn’t give it time to erupt. “In this case, it’s a good thing. It ensures he’ll be treated fairly. They won’t risk one of the last potential wielders of the sharingan due to negligence.”

Iruka’s glare could have cut diamond. If Iruka wanted to, he could wield it as a literal kunai, wedge it between Kakashi’s ribs, chipping bone, or slice his soft underbelly. 

Iruka wasn’t the sort of person to imagine such things. Kakashi was.

“And that’s how he’s supposed to grow up?” Iruka demanded. “Knowing he’s nothing more than a weapon to his own people? With the expectation of an entire clan resting on his traumatized shoulders? That’s going to kill him as surely as his brother would have.”

“Maa,” Kakashi drawled. “I think it worked alright with me.” 

An auditory vacuum sucked out the air between them. Kakashi could feel breath entering and leaving his lungs, smell the faint scents of chalk and—was that explosive powder? But Iruka’s stricken look stole all sound. 

Kakashi swallowed, gaze flickering away for a poignant second. When it returned, it was harder, steadier. “The children of clan heads aren’t treated the same as others, Iruka. I know you blame Konoha for ignoring you, the other orphans, and I’m not saying you’re wrong—but Sasuke’s place in the village is assured. It won’t be much different than he was raised to expect. And his personal scars won’t be fixed by a concerned stranger.” 

Crimson flushed Iruka’s face. “ _Someone_ needs to be concerned. Maybe if someone had been, this wouldn’t have happened in the first place. If—” Iruka looked away, eyes closing. He breathed in shakily. It left him in a pained gust. 

The thread of frustration and grief pulled taut in his quiet voice was more powerful than any shouting. 

“Uchiha Yato was on my genin team. We hadn’t talked much since we became chūnin, but he told me about his cousin. A prodigy. Pushed through the Academy too young. It’s not even war-time, but he was promoted so quickly. ANBU, if the rumors are true. Yato spoke about him with some sort of—of _admiration_. If anyone had stopped to consider what was best for Itachi, for any of these kids, rather than just what would be profitable to the village—”

“Maybe this wouldn’t have happened.” Kakashi concluded flatly. Iruka opened his eyes. “Or maybe it would have turned out exactly the same. Iruka, you can’t see what goes on behind closed doors—in the T&I building, in ANBU. I will tell you that Konoha isn’t deliberately driving her shinobi to commit mass murder; not without being paid for it, at least.” His dry addition earned a glare, which he ignored. “There are procedures in place. Psychological assessments are nearly as second-nature to the higher ranks as kills, and counseling isn’t a myth, even if few willingly take it. I won’t say that more shouldn’t be done, but the human mind isn’t a clock you can always fix with regular winding and oil in the gears. I think you know that.”

On either side of his legs, Iruka’s fingers tightly gripped the rim of the podium, keeping him steady as his wings trembled. He pursed his lips and looked to one of the windows, out on a green grass lawn that stretched for an eternity, blades of grass swaying in a gentle, idyllic wind. A rope swing hung perfectly still from a large ash tree, a rock unmoved by the waves.

“I know.” Iruka whispered. “But I want to try. Even if it does nothing, I—I want to show them that someone cares. If they have to be taught to kill, they should be taught how to love, too.” 

Suddenly, Kakashi understood the reason for their location. Warmth blossomed in his stomach, spreading out to each of his limbs, the tips of his ears. 

“You want to be a teacher.” 

“Even if you think it’s useless. ‘You don’t have to be the Hokage to be strong, you know.’” Iruka parroted, stubborn and righteous anger building visibly in his chest.

Kakashi had long since learned that his smile looked more like a snarl, but he couldn’t stop the way it stretched his lips. “You’re proof of that. If there’s anyone I believe can teach someone how to love, it’s you, Iruka- _sensei_.”

Kakashi didn’t want Iruka to think that he could save every kid, that a single person caring would somehow be the perfect fix in each child-soldier's life. Idealism was the epitome of ethics, until it coincided with that harsh and fickle creature called reality.

However, that didn’t mean Iruka couldn’t save some. 

He had saved Kakashi.

Iruka’s gaze flickered to him, then the floor. He ducked his head and scratched at his scar, as if his hand could hide his blush from Kakashi’s sight. It couldn’t. Even when the rest of their world was a blur, Kakashi’s crystalline focus could never waver from the one thing that mattered.

“I’m not going to make jōnin anyway. I’m not sure I want to, to be honest. But becoming a teacher isn’t easy, either. My application might be rejected.”

“It won’t be.” Kakashi intended to reassure, but he also spoke the truth; beyond being a competent shinobi and one of the Sandaime’s favorites, the Academy’s classes were growing larger than ever by the influx of post-war babies aging to Academy admittance. Adequate teachers were in short supply. 

There was silence for several minutes.

Iruka watched the grass, and Kakashi watched Iruka. 

“Maa, I guess you’ve finally figured out what you want, then.” Kakashi’s claws made a slight scraping noise against the surface of the table as he laid down. It seemed this was going to be one of their longer nights. “You’ll have to wake up early for classes, you know. No more sleeping in until noon.” 

Iruka’s laugh filled the room, quiet and scratchy. His cheeks grew round and pink with his smile. “Don’t worry; I’ll make time for you somehow. You’re the very first member of my pack, after all.” Iruka’s smile slipped into something soft—so painfully soft—yet firm enough to carry a dozen things Kakashi didn’t know how to name, but desperately wanted to learn. He met Kakashi’s eyes. “I want to pass on the Will of Fire, but… I know something else I want, too. I’m willing to wait a while longer, if that’s what it takes.”

There was no question what Iruka wanted.

Kakashi should tell him not to wait, that what he wanted would never come. 

The words stuck in his throat until they burned and the ashes crumbled down to his stomach, lost too deep to retrieve.

It was selfish, very selfish—but Kakashi _wanted_ him to wait.

Wanted there to be something to give him. 

Maybe, one day, when porcelain and blood and the stench of death were no longer Kakashi’s constant companions… 

Maybe there would be.

“Shouldn’t it be a ‘flock’ for you?” Kakashi finally asked, tone and mouth dry. “Or a ‘pod’?”

Iruka’s wings somehow generated enough current to knock a full-grown wolf off of a desk while barely rocking the podium he sat on. 

The barking laugh that burst from Iruka was worth Kakashi not catching himself as he fell. 

There wasn’t any pain, but Kakashi would have suffered through a lot worse for Iruka, anyway.

ANBU had been Kakashi’s life for a decade. After Obito’s death, Minato had recognized Kakashi’s need for structure, for clear commands; and most likely, he wanted to keep a close eye on Kakashi personally. The Sandaime hadn’t seen fit to change that when he took over, and Kakashi had served the old man faithfully. 

Until Hiruzen _did_ see fit. 

There wasn’t an incident that incited his discharge. At least, not that Kakashi was aware of, and not that Hiruzen deigned to tell him. It wasn’t Kakashi’s place to determine what role he played to Konoha; he would do whatever she needed. So Kakashi was unceremoniously ripped from his team and forced to take back on the jōnin blues—and genin. 

That was the part that concerned Kakashi most. 

He had thought he might be forced to instruct the remaining Uchiha in the use of the sharingan, should the kid develop it—but he hadn’t ever anticipated becoming an actual jōnin-sensei, and thought he would have years before the Uchiha graduated. He did have a few more years for that, but apparently, the Sandaime believed in giving people time to adjust. Time Kakashi didn’t want.

Leaving ANBU was like a helium balloon being cut free from its tethers, soaring into the sky without a clear direction or boundaries to keep it from reaching the atmosphere, where it would inevitably implode with violent force. 

In ANBU, Kakashi had been apart from the village. He was a shadow, a spectre, interacting only with those he needed (excepting Guy, who thought he was _always_ needed). He traversed the streets of Konoha from point A to point B, never stopping to look at what was between.

Now, he was forced to look.

Iruka was accepted at the Academy, as Kakashi had known he would be. He began as an assistant to a current instructor, but within a year was granted his own class—one that contained more than a single familiar name. 

That information came to Kakashi in a dream. 

Hokage rock overlooked the entirety of Konoha, with a panoramic view of the tree lines, the village gates, and the roads that stretched in cardinal directions. Within the Hokage heads was a complex network of passageways and rooms, one of the many fortresses in the village that would be used to house children and civilians in the event of an invasion. 

Further beneath it, starting a hundred feet below those tunnels and branching through the midst of the Earth like a many-armed root, was ANBU headquarters. A place to which Kakashi would no longer be privy—not while he wore hitai-ate and cloth mask, flak vest rather than armored guards. Even as a wolf, the absence of his katana was a heavy weight on his back, as if he could still feel its presence. Technically, there was nothing stopping him from gaining another sword, but it was a mark of the ANBU, and while Hound was proficient in it, Hatake Kakashi specialized in ninjutsu.

The only sword _Hatake Kakashi_ had worn had long since been destroyed, its broken hilt and tattered scabbard locked away in a hidden compartment beneath his bed. Their presence was both a comfort and—much as Obito’s eye and Rin’s med-kit and Minato’s kunai—an ever-present reminder of his failures.

As the wolf, Kakashi needed no sword. His fangs were weapon enough, sharp and long and a stunning white. 

Perhaps some of his father’s tanto had survived, after all.

“This high up without wings?” Kakashi remarked, padding across the dusty ground to where Iruka sat at the edge of the rock face, cross-legged and staring out across Konoha. Pinks and oranges shaded her foliage. The village was eerily still, no movement to her lush leaves or streets, yet a cool wind whistled through Kakashi’s fur and tugged at Iruka’s hair. 

It was in a ponytail, as had become routine since his new career choice took hold, but now it was disheveled rather than perfect. Thick, waist-long strands were torn from the holder at odd places, tangles and snarls in the once-silky locks. He wore no vest or hitai-ate, and his feet were bare, his uniform blacks coated in dust and chalk and bits of paint of a hue that brought to Kakashi’s mind the Yellow Flash of Konoha. 

There were no wings, no mermaid tail, no fox ears or lizard scales. 

Iruka was merely Iruka. A haggard, exhausted, contemplative, Iruka. 

He glanced over his shoulder to give Kakashi a wan smile. It touched his eyes for only a moment before fading into formality. 

“ _You’ve_ never needed them.” He said as Kakashi trotted up and sat down at his side, his tail brushing Iruka’s thigh as it settled into the dirt. 

“I don’t know how to have them.”

“That’s not true, is it?” Iruka looked forward, eyes losing focus in the distance. “You could get them, if you wanted. You haven’t tried because you know who you are, where your strengths lie. You don’t need to try out a million forms before you know what you want.” 

Kakashi watched his claws as they flexed, digging into the dirt. It crumpled like a soaked cloth, wrinkling but not coming free or smudging Kakashi’s paws. “I know what I want, but that doesn’t mean I can achieve it.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Iruka turn towards him. He didn’t look over to decipher the expression. 

Iruka turned away again, and they sat in silence for what felt like minutes. The cool wind burned the tips of Kakashi’s ears. 

“I got my own class. It’s rare, to be promoted to that after only a year. I think it has more to do with demand than my own skills, but...” Iruka leaned back on his hands, shrugging. “It still means they trust me.” His voice grew quiet. Somber. “Even if they shouldn’t.”

Kakashi couldn’t imagine a reason in the world that would cause him not to trust Iruka. Surely one existed. Kakashi had seen enough betrayal to know that—but he didn’t regret his lack of imagination, in this instance at least. 

“My class has Uchiha Sasuke.” Iruka said, turning his gaze to the clouds. They swirled in odd, chaotic spirals, an abstract artist spilling white over an impressionist’s landscape. “He won’t talk to the other kids, and I don’t know how to make him. I don’t know if I should. The only one who can get a rise out of him is the Kyuubi’s jinchuuriki.” 

Kakashi’s breath seized in his chest as he subtracted years and compared dates. 

Naruto would be eight. Old enough to enter the Academy under the new, post-war restrictions. Old enough to learn to kill. Old enough to understand the hatred directed towards him, if not its origin. 

Iruka didn’t sound hateful. Kakashi wasn’t sure how much negativity Iruka could contain in his soul. 

But there was something wrong nonetheless. 

“Uzumaki Naruto.” Kakashi corrected softly. 

Iruka’s lips pressed together, brows drawing down, creating a hard ridge between them. “I know he’s not the Kyuubi, not really. The Sandaime would never allow him near the other children if he thought there was a threat to them. But it’s… he’s not a normal child, either. And the others see that, even if they don’t get why.” 

Kakashi didn’t know exactly how Naruto had grown up. In truth, he hadn’t thought it was his _place_ to know. After failing Kushina and Minato, after allowing the child’s parents to die, after spending years in a role where his name no longer matched his identity and codes were more used than words—Kakashi didn’t think he could provide anything for Naruto that others couldn’t do better. 

Perhaps no one had tried at all. 

Iruka could. 

“This is exactly what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“It was ambitious to think I would be able to help regular students.” Iruka laughed without humor. “Now they’re asking me to handle the two most difficult cases in Konoha.”

“The ones who need you most.” Kakashi amended. “The ones who need to be taught how to love.” 

Iruka was quiet for a moment. The unfelt breeze slowed to a crawl, evidenced by the limp strands of Iruka’s hair against his vest. Somehow, despite the torrents, none of the dust had been knocked from the teacher’s clothes, stuck there as if ingrained in the fabric itself.

“What about the others?” Iruka muttered. “I can’t contradict what their parents have taught them. I can’t make them play with the jinchuuriki or make friends with Sasuke’s wall of hatred.”

“The outside world isn’t as easy to change as the one here, but it’s possible.” In the distance, Kakashi heard a bird chip, only once—a sweet, clarion warble. “Lead by example. Those who can follow, will.” 

Iruka shook his head with a sigh. “I’m really taking advice on openness and interpersonal relationships from a man who’s been hiding his identity from me for the last twelve years.” 

Put that way, it sounded bad—but there had been reasons for it. 

There still were. 

Kakashi was no longer ANBU. Technically, he no longer had the worries of the village’s security to fall back on, could no longer excuse his reticence as part of the protection ANBU personas were given.

But he was still Kakashi of the Sharingan. Friend-Killer Kakashi. The Man of a Thousand Jutsu. The Copy-nin. Cold-Blooded Kakashi.

He wasn’t anyone Iruka would want to know. Not yet. 

Maybe that would change. The ties that Kakashi felt lost without, the ones that had guided him throughout ANBU for so long, no longer held him fast. For the last two weeks since he had left, that had seemed like a loss, like he was being tossed to the sea without control of his sail. 

Now, he wondered. 

If he were a jōnin-sensei, he would build a new name in the village. A new reputation. He would turn in mission reports at the desk, have an excuse to talk to Iruka about his students, maybe even find a chance to ask him out for an actual meal together instead of an imaginary popsicle. 

He could keep Iruka in their dreams all the while. Kakashi’s reputation preceded him, but he might have time to work around that. If he couldn’t, then at least he would find that out before turning Iruka away from him forever—before tainting the one relationship he had in which there were no expectations, no constraints. 

Maybe it could be done. 

“I didn’t mean that.” Iruka said, causing Kakashi to look over. “You have your reasons. But, if you…” He swallowed, shoulders curling in as he leaned forward, fists on his thighs. “If you ever can, I want to meet you. I know you didn’t choose this—” Iruka waved a hand at the world around them, “— _bond_ , but you chose to let me back in. If you can do that in the other world…” His voice trailed to a whisper. “I want that.”

Kakashi’s heart felt different in this form. Lighter, faster, circulating through his entire body in electric pulses that field his instincts, urged him to run, to pounce, to hide—but in this instance, he thought it would feel exactly the same in any form, with any Iruka. 

Kakashi stood and turned. Iruka began to twist, following Kakashi as he walked back, mouth opening. The wolf didn’t go far. He sat behind Iruka, placing hefty paws on his back and pressing forward with his full weight until Iruka faced forward once more. 

“Stay like this.” 

Iruka hesitated, then gave a jerky nod, the bits of hair left in his ponytail bobbing with the motion. 

Satisfied, Kakashi closed his eyes, and focused. 

He didn’t know how Iruka normally transformed. It was a nearly seamless transition, without hand signs or chakra. He didn’t think that asking for an explanation would help him, not in this case. While their world was shared, their bodies had always been their own, and Kakashi couldn’t change his in the same way Iruka could. 

Kakashi would have to find his own way. 

He built an image in his mind the way he would for a henge, conjuring a visual and then expanding on it, filling in details and seams and scars.

It didn’t work exactly as intended. He meant to appear as a human in his ANBU uniform, sans Hound mask and gloves. Instead, while the humanoid aspect was basically correct (he wasn’t sure if the tail was a phantom sensation or still existent, and he didn’t really want to look), the clothes were rather less. He wore the sleeveless ANBU shirt with black sweatpants and no sandals, gloves gone and fabric mask bunched around his throat. He tried to pull it up, but each time it slipped down immediately, sliding from his skin like oil from water. 

The hitai-ate was gone, as well, but the sharingan had thankfully remained in the waking world. Kakashi felt his stomach loosen at that, a sense of unease he had barely registered settling down. Obito’s eye didn’t take hold. It seemed that fear had been unfounded. 

Iruka’s head twitched slightly, as if he were about to look back, and Kakashi quickly raised a hand to cover his eyes, the other bracing his shoulder much as his canine form’s paws had done. 

“Maa, sensei.” Kakashi breathed. There was something lighter about his tone, a grumble of the wolf that was only noticeable in its absence. “I’m trusting you not to look.”

The tips of Iruka’s ears stained bright red, nearly incandescent. Kakashi wondered if the chūnin’s dark skin flushed so reactively in reality, or if it was merely a by-product of Iruka’s unconscious image of himself.

He wanted to find out.

“Comb?” Kakashi requested as he lowered his hand from Iruka’s eyes. He used it to slip Iruka’s hair tie out, deftly untangling the strands that threatened to break around the elastic.

Within moments, Iruka was handing back a simple, fine-tooth comb, made of a dark brown wood with rich grain. Kakashi set it on his lap and ran his fingers through Iruka’s hair, slowly easing out the worst of the knots. He didn’t have any experience with caring for long hair, but it wasn’t too different from sorting out tangled chakra wire; don’t pull too hard, and let the strands go where they may.

That wasn’t a bad philosophy for life, either—except Kakashi had never been very good at remembering to let go.

“My hair’s never been this long.” Iruka cleared his throat. His voice had gone rough and hoarse. “Or this bad.”

“‘That doesn’t mean you should suffer it here.’” Kakashi quoted. 

He couldn’t see, but he bet Iruka was smiling. Locks of Iruka’s hair suddenly began to slide smoothly between his fingers, silky and unusually warm against his freezing skin. 

“Unless you’re saying you don’t want me to touch you.” He added. He intended it to come out as teasing, though there might have been too much sincerity in his question for that.

“No.” Iruka denied quickly. The blush began to spread from his ears down his neck, disappearing beneath the high collar of his shirt. 

Silence fell until Kakashi picked up the comb and started at the last inch of Iruka’s hair, working in short strokes to begin detangling from the bottom. “I won’t look, but…” Iruka trailed off, unsteady. “Is this the real you?”

Kakashi could have played dumb. He didn’t. 

“Mostly.” Apart from the sharingan, and the damn mask that decided to play hooky from his face. “Why, did you prefer me as a wolf?”

Iruka hummed wistfully. “You were pretty cute.” 

“Maybe I’m cute like this.” The back of one hand rested between Iruka’s shoulder blades, collecting the hair to keep it from tugging at Iruka’s scalp as he moved the comb higher.

“I’m not sure I believe that.” He sounded like he was smiling. “You’ll have to prove it to me.” 

Kakashi’s response stuck in his chest.

Iruka unfolded his legs, drawing his knees up and resting his arms on them as Kakashi continued to work his way up in silence.

An ambling breeze gradually brought life to their surroundings, as if it had been caught in the snarls that Kakashi’s hands had freed. The sky remained shaded in oranges and pinks, never rising or setting. Serenity embraced the timeless dream. If Kakashi focused, he could inhale a herbaceous scent, like sage or young rosemary sprigs. Kakashi soaked it in. The rhythmic motions of the combing lulled him into a peaceful refrain. 

When he reached Iruka’s scalp, he set the comb upon his lap, raking fingers through the base of the hairs in tender, lingering movements. Iruka leaned his head back, pressing into Kakashi’s hands. His eyes, when Kakashi chanced leaning forward to check, were lightly closed. Blissful. 

They remained that way as Kakashi slowly reached forward. He curled fingers around Iruka’s shoulder and gradually, soothingly, pulled him back so that his back rested against Kakashi’s chest. No flak vests separated them, nor kunai sheaths, scroll pockets, or shuriken pouches. Kakashi’s heartbeat was matched in strength only by the electric tingle that hummed at the points they met. 

He hoped Iruka felt it, too. 

His fingers worked against Iruka’s scalp, no longer detangling, but kneading and caressing, subtle motions that followed the rhythm of Iruka’s deep breaths.

If one could fall asleep in a dream, Kakashi would have thought Iruka did. 

Some time later, Iruka moved, but he didn’t pull away. His left hand moved up to capture Kakashi’s where it had remained settled on his shoulder. His palm covered Kakashi’s knuckles, calloused skin brushing as he pulled, sliding Kakashi’s arm down. He adjusted his grip on Kakashi’s wrist while wrapping the arm around his waist, guiding Kakashi’s palm to press against the thin cloth at his abdomen. 

It didn’t move again. 

Iruka kept them connected there until Kakashi’s fingers trailed down his cheek, jaw, throat; they drew a shiver as they descended past Iruka’s collarbone. Yellow paint smeared across Kakashi’s pale skin, but he gave it no heed as his fingers came to rest, chastely, at Iruka’s side. 

His hair was soft against Kakashi’s cheek, both of them free of stubble in this lovely world where ten day missions and the follies of field hygiene didn’t exist. 

Where pain and death didn’t exist. 

Where Iruka did. 

A butterfly lighted on a tree branch below them, pale yellow and amber wings framed in velvety black. 

It was the last thing Kakashi saw before the alarmed barking of three hounds startled him awake, coursing adrenaline through his bloodstream and washing away any pleasant illusion of warmth.

In this world, there was pain.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, huge credit to booleanWildcard for the brilliant beta, to Kalira for being the awesome person who spawned the ideas for this, and to the Umino Hours Discord for organizing this whole thing.

Iruka had heard the call of his wolf for over a dozen years. It came just as he entered the bridge between consciousness and sleep, urging him to cross into his wolf’s domain. If Iruka slept first, he crafted a world all on his own, landscapes that Wolf might join or disrupt. He could always tell when Wolf arrived; his presence rippled like water around a pebble, causing tiny tremors that affected the world around him in small, but notable ways. Often, scents and sounds would become sharper, but hues grew muted; birds and insects and small rodents would burst to life in the trees or fields, signalling an awareness of creatures and surroundings that Iruka himself lacked in favor of textures, temperatures, taste. 

On nights that Wolf neither called nor entered, Iruka’s dreams faded from his mind as wakefulness came, leaving behind vague impressions, fleeting images that were bled of all color and time. Only the ones with Wolf lasted, forging memories that shaped his waking self. 

Iruka didn’t expect the call every night. Sometimes it wouldn’t come for weeks or months, and sometimes it was there in every long blink of the day, yearning for him to answer it. 

Three nights passed in silence after Wolf met him on Hokage Rock. Then, Iruka’s head barely hit the pillow when the howl came.

It was more of a scream. 

The world wasn’t one of Iruka’s making. It felt rigid, immutable, as if someone had discarded Iruka in a lockbox and closed the lid. Concrete walls without windows or doors imprisoned him. There was no definable light source that Iruka could see, but the space was bathed in a dingy yellow glow, like an old bulb filtering through a screen of grime and bug guts. Damp humidity clung stickly to his skin, but the walls and floor were as dry as bone. 

If it were reality, it would have taken Iruka’s eyes a moment to adjust to the low lighting. As it was, it took less than a breath of moldy air for him to focus on the man in the center of the room. 

The _man_. 

The wild silver mane had hardly changed, except it was confined to a skull and the individual hairs were finer, softer. Rather than a rounded muzzle, Iruka was treated to pale skin and high cheekbones. Smooth black coated from straight nose to angled jaw; it took Iruka a moment to recognize the ebony was a fabric mask rather than a shadow or war paint. 

One eye was closed and scarred, the eyelid nearly split open from the depth of an old wound—perhaps it had been. It was a scar Iruka knew well, although it had grown over the course of the last few years, changing in texture and length, aging and re-opening in turns. This iteration disappeared beneath the mask; Iruka couldn’t tell how far it went, whether it reached down a slender neck to gouge a mark over Wolf’s heart. 

There was no doubt in Iruka’s mind, even for a moment, that this was his wolf. 

He was beautiful. 

If the situation had allowed, Iruka would have greedily drank in every inch of his features, pulled down his mask and traced his skin, memorized the strong lines of his face and mapped them to the boy, his wolf, his friend— 

The situation did not allow.

A dark eye stared at him. It was sharp and urgent as steel. 

The other eye slowly blinked open to join it, revealing a matching charcoal iris. It shimmered as Iruka viewed it, hints of blood red swimming through the sclera and pooling in the pupil. 

The rest of Wolf’s clothes were simple, a jōnin uniform without flak vest or hitai-ate. Fingerless gloves covered his hands, and a bandage wrapped around his thigh as if to hold a kunai, but no weapons or accoutrements could be seen on his person. 

Iruka stood in stark contrast, guarded in full chūnin attire—armed to the teeth by the aggressive nature of Wolf’s call.

There was no one here to fight.

But there was someone to protect.

“Iruka.” 

Wolf’s voice was different. Rather than the low, primal rumble Iruka had come to associate with the wolf, this voice was smooth and rich in undertones. Iruka had heard it only once before, on Hokage Rock. 

That voice bounced around the room and slid down Iruka’s chest, burrowing deep in the pit of his stomach. 

Although Iruka had never seen this man before—not since he could actually be called a ‘man’—he could read the piercing exigency in his tone and eyes, the soldier-straight line of his spine. 

“I need you to give a message to the Hokage.” 

Iruka didn’t have to ask whether it was urgent. He swallowed, hands clenching into fists. 

There was no question that Iruka would do it. 

“What’s the message?” 

“I’ll need a verbatim repeat-back.” Wolf’s body shimmered, like a flame flickering in the wind. The image restabilized as he spoke, as if the message itself were anchoring him to the world.

The message was several sentences long, and densely packed. Iruka didn’t know all of the codes, some of them far above his pay grade and clearance level, but the general aspects were devastating in their clarity: 

Wolf had been captured by at least three missing-nin of jōnin rank. 

His chakra was sealed, and was being held near the border of the Land of Lightning. 

Probability of escaping alive without friendly intervention was low. 

But Iruka hadn’t needed a code to tell him that. Wolf wouldn’t have been there otherwise. Iruka was grateful that there was a possibility of survival at all; messages were often a shinobi’s last act. 

Iruka’s pulse raced to a gallop, adrenaline starting to surge through his system. The fear would no doubt wake him if he couldn’t control it. 

Iruka always woke from nightmares. 

Training took Iruka over. He repeated Wolf’s message through numb lips. Wolf nodded in confirmation. Iruka repeated it in his mind twice more, for security’s sake. 

He swallowed the keys to saving Wolf, the bitter taste of brass lingering on his tongue as the words clinked down to fill his stomach. One by one they slid, settling heavy between his vital organs, and became secured with his life. His life and Wolf’s had been intertwined from the start, cords that braided together, becoming more than the sum of their parts.

Wolf’s image blurred again.

The ends were starting to fray.

Strong arms wrapped around Iruka’s back, pulling him in tight. Wolf’s chin rested against Iruka’s shoulder, and Iruka realized he couldn’t breathe—not for pressure, but for the fear that swelled and expanded in his chest, squeezing from all sides the fleshy walls of his heart.

Iruka closed his eyes. 

He returned the embrace. 

“Would it be crazy to say I’ve dreamed of this?” Iruka’s shaky whisper was nearly swallowed by the gravity of the empty room.

Wolf let out a harsh breath, one that might have been a chuckle in his other form. 

When he spoke, any sign of amusement was gone. “I’m sorry.” He murmured. His clothed nose dragged against Iruka’s neck as he pulled back, resting his forehead to Iruka’s.

The gray and flint and graphite flecks in Wolf’s eyes… they were more familiar to Iruka than his own. 

He prayed he would have time to learn the features that held them.

A gloved palm slid to cup Iruka’s jaw. Wolf’s quiet, firm words didn’t disturb the fabric of his mask, but Iruka could picture lips forming around them, imagine vocal cords vibrating to produce them. 

“Repeat it back to me. One more time.” 

Iruka did.

Wolf tilted his head and their lips brushed. Though the fabric was never displaced, Iruka could feel warm, soft, thin skin beneath his mouth, could taste something clean and astringent like tannins.

Iruka’s throat closed, because it wasn’t a kiss.

It was a soldier’s last words.

“Thank you, Iruka.”

Swirling leaves took Wolf’s place. They wilted and dried during their fall to the ground.

Iruka watched the leaves crumble to dirt on the hard cement floor. 

When he woke, it was with a gasp, and hardly a second’s thought before his feet hit the floor.

It wasn’t until he was standing outside the Hokage’s residence, spilling insanity to an impassive porcelain mask, that Iruka realized another piece of the information he had been given. 

It had been nestled within the code as a single word among many, a razor-sharp shuriken buried between layers of others that were dulled and bent by pre-genin hands. But there the sharp one sat, waiting for chubby, unsuspecting fingers to dig down and slice themselves open on the hazardous edges, a sharp sting felt only long seconds after the blood began to seep.

When Iruka was finally allowed through to see the Hokage himself, he recited the information perfectly—except for a slight hitch, when that shuriken sliced through Iruka’s jugular.

“Kakashi.”

* * *

Kakashi came up with seventeen different scenarios on what he would do when the fūinjutsu barrier came down, depending on many factors: his physical strength at the time, the range of movement in his dislocated shoulder, his chakra levels, whether the stone slab of a door was taken down or another entrance opened, how many of his captors were visible at entry, et cetera. 

He repeated each scenario in his mind, mentally going through the motions of each one, over and over. He tensed muscle groups to simulate movement, sparing himself the consumption of energy he didn’t have. 

Kakashi used every tool in his arsenal to survive. 

Iruka had his name now. 

Kakashi couldn’t let him see it engraved in stone.

Before Kakashi slept again, the barrier came down.

* * *

Tenzō had long ago remarked on Kakashi’s unparalleled ability to elevate the simplest of missions, adding to them the nifty elements of sucking chest wounds and lengthy hospital stays.

Apparently, leaving ANBU didn’t change that.

At least all the fatal blows were to his enemies’ chests this time.

Unconsciousness was not the same thing as sleep. (Which Kakashi thought was a damn shame; if it was, he’d have accrued a good extra week or two’s worth in his life). Hospitals were particularly conducive to the former—not so much the latter. It was a combination of that, and perhaps Iruka’s own sleepless nights, that led to three days in Konoha’s illustrious care without a single hint of brown hair or wings. 

At least, Kakashi wanted to believe those were the reasons. 

On the third night, he cheeked an azure, oval pill that burned his tongue with each second before the medic-nin turned their back. Then he spat it out and crushed it to dust beneath his thumb.

The pills were pain-killer and sedative, perfect for enforcing rest on a chakra-depleted patient. 

Kakashi let the agony spread through his limbs. 

Sleep was a long time coming, but come it did.

Iruka did not. 

Twenty-six hours added several blue stains to white linens, and tore the skin from the inside of Kakashi’s cheeks until they were raw and bleeding and still not as agonizing as the rest of him.

Then, blissfully, the buzzing fluorescents faded into darkness. 

Grainy sand materialized under Kakashi’s paws. The scent of salt and clams replaced harsh antiseptics. Waves lapped up to dampen the sand, but they didn’t stick to Kakashi, providing a stable surface as he crossed empty distance to the shadowed figure on the shore.

It took hours. 

Finally, the shape began to change, color and texture illuminating the person’s form.

Iruka faced out into the distance, hair loose and ending around his neck. It swayed gently in the breeze. Sand was embedded in his ratty sweatpants and well-worn t-shirt. It was impossible to tell the colors of those, or perhaps they changed. The sun rose and fell with only minutes in each day, casting reds and pinks and oranges and blues onto the fabric in turn.

His skin was untouched by the light. 

Kakashi sat by Iruka’s side and watched as the waxing sun’s incandescence blotted out stars.

“You look like shit.” Iruka commented, looking over for the first time. His eyes reflected a moon they wouldn’t see for another two minutes or more. 

“How does a wolf look like shit?” Kakashi glanced down to check that nothing was stuck in his fur. The motley scars were no more than his typical fare. 

“Your ears are drooping.” Iruka reached up to flick one of them, causing it to twitch away reflexively. “But I’m also projecting.”

Kakashi tilted his head to the side, raking his gaze across Iruka’s multi-hued person. He couldn’t see much that was different, except for his hair ending just before the crest of his shoulders, and the rapid pace of the sun and moon’s courses through the sky that asserted a frantic rhythm into their once-timeless world. “Hard day?”

“Hard five days.” Iruka grimaced. His eyebrows furrowed. “I thought you’d find me sooner.”

“Hospital.” Kakashi answered shortly. 

Iruka looked back out to the ocean. He extended his feet and the tide rose up to meet them, lapping at his toes. “I wouldn’t have been able to come anyway, I think. Not with them in my head.”

Kakashi’s lips twisted along with his stomach. “Yamanakas?”

Iruka grunted a confirmation. “And the Sandaime himself. We both knew it would happen eventually. I’m just glad they haven’t broken anything.” 

Kakashi hadn’t been the only one worried. 

“Did they have an explanation?” 

Iruka shrugged, kicking his feet lightly. The sand sank to form a depression under his heels, liquid quickly seeping in to fill it. He rolled his sweatpants up to his knees and dangled his legs in the reservoir of ocean water. 

“They’re having a lot of fun with that part.” The corner of Iruka’s mouth quirked into a wry smile. “Maybe I’ll tell you after we wake up, Kakashi.”

Kakashi held his breath. He waited for “of the Sharingan” to follow. 

It didn’t. 

Kakashi hoped it never would. Perhaps Iruka did, too.

A lunar moth floating in the ocean-pond slowly morphed, wings reshaping and expanding, pigment leaching into their surface, until a monarch fluttered its wings. The sun conquered the sky once more.

They both knew that the Yamanakas would tell Kakashi as much as they had Iruka, after conducting similar tests. The only reason Kakashi had escaped interrogation thus far was the chakra depletion and dehydration he suffered from his mission. That reprieve wouldn’t last for long. 

Iruka’s offer was of something else. 

Kakashi didn’t know what, exactly—but he knew one thing:

He needed hands to seize it. 

The transformation was easier, accepting what he asked without trying for more. His toes elongated into fingers, fur retracted into smooth black cloth clinging to a straight nose, and the moon surged to overtake its battlefield, shining silver that gleamed off the Konoha leaf. 

Iruka was watching Kakashi when he looked up. The waves of the ocean mimicked the pounding pulse in his ears. 

It was Iruka that bridged the chasm. His hand parted empty space, damp fingers gathering Kakashi’s, weaving sepia and alabaster together. Iruka brought both hands to rest in the sand between them. 

He always was the one with the power to change their world.

Kakashi looked down into the ocean-pond, watching tanned legs move the water. Ripples continued past the pond’s edge, carrying through the sand and expanding to reform the sea. 

The sun rose to midday, flashing against iridescent blue and umber scales within the waves. 

Maybe Kakashi had the power to change it, too.

“Are you ever going to call me Wolf again?” Kakashi asked suddenly.

Iruka considered for a moment, lips pressing together in thought. “You’re still Wolf to me. This…” He squeezed Kakashi’s hand. Tingles shot up Kakashi’s wrist, collecting like lightning in his chest. “I don’t know Hatake Kakashi yet.” 

“Yes, you do.”

Iruka didn’t say anything until the moon had risen for three more nights. 

Then, it was a simple request.

“Show me.”

Kakashi woke up on scratchy sheets, phantom warmth clinging to his palm.

Hospitals were a shinobi’s hell at home. Out in the field, it was a shinobi’s job to control their surroundings, to keep keen watch and account for areas of weakness, to set up a perimeter, barriers, traps, whatever else was needed to stay alive. Many shinobi, particularly jōnin, treated their actual homes the same way, guarding them with wards and alarms that would put a fortress to shame. To be invited into a jōnin’s home was an honor, a sign of trust not to be taken lightly. 

In hospitals, all control was seized by cold hands. From the starched linens to the ass-out gowns to the timing of meals and number of visitors, the sterile rooms were little more than prison cells. Perhaps civilians had options for healthcare, had the freedom to decline unwanted drugs or take elective procedures—shinobi didn’t. A shinobi did what was necessary to get back in the field, whether they wanted to or not. 

Kakashi resented this as much as the next shinobi. He followed it just as well as the next, too.

Iruka had a tendency to overcome the immutable. 

The halls came alive as the shift changed. Konoha was still dark, stars barely beginning to fade, when a new medic came in to change Kakashi’s IV bag and check his vitals. 

Ten minutes later, they were gone. 

So was Kakashi. 

Iruka’s address wasn’t hard to find. This early, there was a single exhausted person working the records room. After stopping at his apartment for pain pills without sedatives and clothes that covered his ass, slipping past them was far easier than it had any right to be. 

There was only one Umino Iruka in Konoha. The file was crisp and thin in Kakashi’s hands. 

It took longer to actually reach his destination, given that preserving his tiny modicum of chakra seemed more important than racing rooftops. Kakashi found himself wishing for four paws, but he wouldn’t have used the wolf if he could. 

Iruka wouldn’t want him to.

The door was solid with a scratched veneer. The street lamps were still on, illuminating rusted apartment numbers in a flickering glow. Kakashi’s decision was long since made. He knocked. 

It took a few seconds for stirring to come from inside, then soft thumps, footsteps approaching the door. 

Kakashi had never heard Iruka’s footsteps in the dreams. He knew them now—the timing, the gait, the weight. He knew now what it sounded like when Iruka shuffled barefoot out of bed, exhausted and cranky, and opened the door to glare at his visitor with bloodshot eyes which quickly grew to the size of ginkgo leaves.

Dark shadows crushed the fragile skin beneath Iruka’s eyes. Creases lined one side of his face as if he had been laying on rumpled fabric. His hair was pulled up in a haphazard style, like a ponytail that hadn’t been fully drawn through the last time and got stuck in an elongated bun. He wore faded sweatpants of a static green, and a gray tank top that exposed tanned shoulders and strong biceps which were free of scars or wings or crimson swirls. 

Kakashi had learned to breathe through sixty-four layers of dirt and rubble and stained tatami. He had learned to control his inhales and exhales when giving himself sutures across broken ribs, had discovered out in ANBU how to breathe quietly, evenly, feigning sleep so he could slit a throat when it stumbled within striking range. 

Kakashi could control himself. He could survive and thrive through it all. 

Out of all the things he had been through, it was Iruka who took his breath away. Iruka who made him feel like he was standing on the highest mountain peak, with thin air and too much oxygen, too much to see, _too much_. 

It was always Iruka. 

Iruka was also the cause of the nerves stinging Kakashi’s brain, which propelled him to blurt out words so far from what he had planned. 

“You really do look like shit.” 

Iruka blinked, slowly, lids catching on dry eyeballs. 

He brought both hands up to scrub vigorously at his face, rubbing pink to the surface. 

Then he looked up again. Letting out a long, heavy exhale, he stepped back. 

Kakashi slipped inside, and the door clicked shut behind him.

Their breaths filled the tiny space of the genkan. They slipped into his skull and fogged his thoughts with a heavy mist. 

“Do you, uh—” Iruka cleared his throat. “You want some tea?” He reached up to scratch at his scar. 

The motion was as familiar as a maternal heartbeat—moreso, to Kakashi. 

He had seen it a thousand times, in a thousand forms. 

Time slowed with Kakashi’s pulse, his breaths and the world evening out. 

Kakashi slipped his hands in his pockets and smiled. It grew to touch his eye. “Sure.” 

Iruka turned on his heel and headed for the kitchen. “You’re not a picture of stunning health yourself, you know.” He retorted belatedly, grabbing a kettle from the stove and bringing it over to the sink. Kakashi slipped off his sandals as he watched from the genkan. A flick of the tap sent water flowing. The sound broke the silence as droplets splashed on Iruka’s fingers, lingering shiny and wet. 

_Real._

“Maa, I figured I’d be worse after the Yamanaka got to me.” Kakashi said mildly as he stepped into the kitchen. His bare feet hit cold linoleum. 

Iruka snorted, but didn’t disagree. He moved around his tiny kitchen, opening squeaky cabinets and asking for tea preferences. Unwashed coffee cups clinked as he pushed them aside to make room for clean ones. Several had small chips along the rims, matte ceramic cutting through glossy finishes. The smell of black tea leaves wafted to Kakashi as Iruka opened a wax paper bag and fumbled around for a tea strainer. He scooped leaves into it with the sort of ease that comes only from expertise or apathy; Kakashi was more inclined to believe the latter at this hour. 

They didn’t speak until the kettle whistled, shrill and aggravating the ice pick chiseling through Kakashi’s skull. Iruka carefully kept his fingers away from the steam as he opened the spout. The cups clinked once more as he set them and the teapot on a tray, turning and jerking his head to indicate Kakashi should follow him.

Sweatpants bunched at Iruka’s thigh as he knelt at the kotatsu, the motion jerky and graceless. Kakashi took a cushion at a diagonal, strained muscles protesting the movement. He heard a light sound of swishing liquid as Iruka set the tray on the ink-stained surface.

_Real._

They stared at the tea pot. 

They had time.

“You were ANBU.” Iruka finally said. Then he seemed to realize he was sitting seiza-style. He purposefully relaxed, flopping back on his ass and curling a knee up to his chest. “You’re not anymore?”

“I’m not ANBU.” Kakashi rephrased. 

Iruka nodded, blunt teeth chewing into his chapped lower lip. 

Silence lengthened.

Kakashi looked around the room. 

It had never been a setting for their dreams. The cluttered walls were laden with pictures of Iruka’s family, his genin team—even some handmade ones that had to have been made by his students. 

One such picture depicted a crudely drawn orange canine, huge jaws open with yellowed fangs exposed. A blue swallowtail butterfly, crafted in a different, more deliberate hand, hovered just out of reach. It was impossible to tell at a glance if the predator was playing with it or attempting to crunch fragile wings between lethal teeth.

Iruka followed his line of sight. He let out a soft chuckle, rubbing the back of his neck. “The butterfly was another kid’s, but Naruto thought it was boring so he added to it. He asked me what my favorite animal was before I realized what he was doing.” 

“And you told him…” Kakashi squinted, trying to make sense of the amorphous shape. The uneven lines remained clear and stationary, but it didn’t help in discerning wolf from dog.

Iruka grinned, wide and happy, tired eyes twinkling with mirth. His foot tapped Kakashi’s thigh under the edge of the kotatsu. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” 

Kakashi swallowed. Space expanded behind his ribs. 

_Real_ , his heart screamed _._

But Kakashi knew better.

It had always been real. 

Not by explainable rules or logical interpretations—it was real because Kakashi and Iruka made it so.

They, together, had always been real.

Something in Iruka’s expression changed. His cheeks flushed and he averted his gaze to the picture. It took him long moments to return. 

Kakashi had never looked away. 

“Why’s there still a mask between us?” Iruka asked quietly. 

Kakashi’s fingers barely twitched, an unconscious desire to check the garment’s security. He suppressed it. “I’ve always worn this.”

“I know.” Iruka rolled forward onto his knees, shuffling closer as if peering from a shorter distance would allow him to see through the cloth itself. “But is it one that you want to wear?” 

Reasons and lessons and insecurities flickered through Kakashi’s mind. He pushed them aside. 

They had already created one world together. Why not another?

“Not with you.” Kakashi rasped.

Iruka’s knees moved flush to Kakashi’s thigh, a warm pressure even through thick layers of cloth. He reached up, slowly, gaze locked on Kakashi’s. 

Calloused fingers caressed his cheeks and removed the last layer of his disguise—

No, not the last. 

As Kakashi’s bare face was exposed to the fragrant air, nose and lips revealed, Iruka didn’t pause to take it in. His fingers trailed up, continued over lips, stubble, cheekbones, the fine creases around Kakashi’s eyes... to rest on his hitai-ate. 

Kakashi didn’t think. He nodded. Iruka’s fingerprints brushed his skin with the movement. The upwards path of the hitai-ate carried Iruka’s lips with it. The smile remained as the barrier was discarded.

Iruka’s thumb traced the scar down Kakashi’s cheek, the ridges of split skin that almost seemed as if they could be grasped and pulled apart, revealing all the contents within. 

Kakashi would have let him. 

“You’re beautiful like this, too.” Iruka said. 

The awe in his voice had nothing to do with the Copy-nin, the ANBU, and everything to do with Hatake Kakashi. 

Kakashi swallowed. “Maa, I told you I was cute.” 

Iruka laughed, throaty and pleased. 

In the next moment, his warm lips were pressed to Kakashi’s. 

Iruka smelled clean and herbal, like sprigs of young rosemary.

When Iruka pulled away, he rested their foreheads together, in the spots where their Konoha leaves normally marked. The symbols of their loyalty, their faith. Everything either of them had worked for, had sweat blood in the name of. 

Dawn threw a slim ray of light across Iruka’s hair, turning red the frizzy wisps that fought to break free of their restraints. Iruka’s head slipped to rest in the crook of Kakashi’s neck.

Over time, the light spread across Iruka’s back, stretching to each side like wings.

Kakashi favorite memories existed in those moments between tomorrows, in a world that could be anything they believed was possible. 

Now, Kakashi looked forward to tomorrow itself.

Sunlight flashed on the teapot, iridescent blue and umber swirls illuminated, drawing Kakashi’s eye.

“The tea will get cold.” Kakashi murmured. 

He felt a smile press into his neck. 

“I’ll make you more.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so incredibly thankful for all of your kudos and comments and subscribes and just reading this. :) You're all truly amazing people.


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